Invention Disclosures: the First Step to Protecting Your Invention

A complete invention disclosure should identify all persons who contributed to the conception of the invention, describe the invention in enough detail for a patent attorney to evaluate patentability and draft claims, identify any known prior art, and document the dates on which the key inventive steps were conceived and reduced to practice. The disclosure should also flag any public disclosures or sales offers that may affect the one-year grace period or destroy patentability in foreign jurisdictions.

Patenting an invention and patent counseling counsel can advise on the information required for a complete disclosure and assess whether the current disclosure captures the invention at the right level of detail.

The choice between patent and trade secret protection must be made before any public disclosure destroys both options. A patent provides a time-limited monopoly but requires full disclosure and expires after twenty years, while a trade secret can provide unlimited protection but is permanently destroyed by a single breach, independent discovery, or reverse engineering, and the right choice depends on how visible the invention is in the final product.

Patent counseling and prosecution and trade secret misappropriation counsel can advise on whether the specific invention is better protected as a patent or trade secret and develop the integrated IP protection strategy.

Under U.S. .atent law, an invention is initially owned by the individual inventors, and the employer obtains ownership only if the inventors have signed a valid assignment agreement, if the invention falls within the applicable state's employee invention assignment statute, or if the employer has shop rights. California, Washington, and several other states limit what employers can require employees to assign, and an assignment clause exceeding the statutory limit may be unenforceable.

Patent and data rights and employment litigation and consulting counsel can advise on whether the invention belongs to the employer or the employee, assess the scope of any assignment obligation, and develop the ownership determination strategy.

Joint inventorship is determined by contribution to the conception of the subject matter of at least one claim, not by contribution to building or testing the invention or supervising the inventors, and including a person who did not contribute to conception, or failing to include someone who did, can render the entire patent invalid. The determination of who qualifies as a joint inventor is frequently the most contentious part of the disclosure review process.

Patent prosecution and portfolio management and intellectual property counsel can advise on the joint inventorship rules, assess whether all contributors qualify as inventors, and develop the inventorship determination and correction strategy.

Current USPTO guidance following Thaler v. Vidal establishes that only natural persons can be listed as inventors, meaning an AI system cannot be named regardless of its contribution, but a human who merely follows AI output without independently contributing to the conception of the claimed invention may not qualify as an inventor. This creates significant legal risk for companies relying heavily on AI tools, because if the human contribution is insufficient the resulting patent may be invalid.

Technology patent law and software patent law counsel can advise on USPTO guidance on AI-assisted inventions, assess whether the human contribution satisfies the inventorship requirement, and develop the AI inventorship documentation strategy.

When AI tools are involved in the inventive process, the disclosure should document what the human inventors contributed to the conception of the claimed invention independently of the AI output, what prompts and parameters the humans provided, and what technical judgment the humans exercised in evaluating and implementing the AI's suggestions. This supports the inventorship analysis if the patent is challenged and establishes the evidentiary record for USPTO duty of disclosure inquiries.

Patent counseling and prosecution and technology & IP transactions counsel can advise on the disclosure obligations when AI tools contribute to the inventive process and develop the documentation strategy.

A company's internal invention disclosure process should include a standardized form, a review process routing each disclosure to patent counsel within a specified time, a triage mechanism classifying disclosures by commercial value and prosecution priority, and a feedback loop telling inventors what happened to their disclosure. Without a defined process, companies routinely lose patentable inventions to grace period expiration, a competitor's earlier application, or an inadvertent prior art disclosure.

Patent prosecution and portfolio management and corporate compliance and risk management counsel can advise on the structure of an internal disclosure program, assess whether the current process captures all inventions requiring evaluation, and develop the disclosure form and triage strategy.

A complete, contemporaneous, and properly preserved invention disclosure establishes the date of conception and reduction to practice that may become relevant in an inter partes review, an interference, or any litigation challenging the validity or priority of the patent. The disclosure should be signed and dated by the inventors, witnessed by a non-inventor, and maintained in a secure docket system that preserves the original record with its metadata intact.

Patent counseling and intellectual property registration counsel can advise on documentation practices that support a patent application and establish the date of invention, and develop the record-keeping and prosecution support strategy.