Inventorship and Authorship

Ownership of a U.S. patent is based on inventorship. In the United States, an inventor is the owner of the claimed invention unless it is assigned to another entity. The correct naming of inventors is important, and the improper naming of inventors in a patent can be grounds for rendering the patent unenforceable. Each inventor must make an intellectual contribution, solely or jointly, to at least one element of a claim in the patent. This is in contrast to authorship of a research article, where authors may be named to acknowledge contribution to the reported research rather than an intellectual contribution. Thus, identifying inventors for a patent is not the same as identifying authors for a publication.