Management of rights related to ideas for prospectively patentable inventions

摘要

Various methods of managing ideas include different combinations of the following acts: (a) maintaining a computer database for accumulating ideas for prospectively patentable inventions, where the ideas include needs and requirements of the inventions; (b) establishing contractual obligations by contributors of the ideas to the database to transfer property rights to inventions derived at least in part from the accumulated ideas, where the transfer is for contingent economic gain; (c) providing contingent contractual rights to at least some inventions derived at least in part from the accumulated ideas; (d) enabling receipt of contributions of the ideas for prospective entry into the database; (e) establishing contractual obligations by contributors of the ideas to the database to transfer property rights to inventions derived at least in part from the accumulated ideas to transferees other than contributors of ideas from which the invention was at least in part derived.