Building an Invention Assignment and Reward Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Agreements, Statutory Limits, Disclosure Processes, and Compensation Schemes
By Casey Scott McKay ·
A practitioner's guide to building the programme that makes an employer actually own what its people invent. It begins with the agreement itself — present assignment language, jurisdiction-specific carve-outs, the prior inventions schedule, and a holdover clause that will survive scrutiny. It then covers population coverage, because contractors, interns, advisors, and academic collaborators fall outside employment templates. A central section builds the disclosure and review process, which is where most programmes fail through neglect rather than design. Later steps design the award scheme against the statutory regimes that apply outside the United States, cover confirmatory assignments and recordation, and address onboarding and exit. It closes with remediation of an existing chain of title and the metrics that show whether the programme works.
IP and Technology > Patent Counseling Transactions | Guide | Published 11 December 2024 - Updated 27 June 2026 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
The programme, not the paperwork
Almost every company has an invention assignment agreement. Almost no company has an invention assignment programme.
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