德国《雇员发明法》修改对中资在德并购之影响.PDFVIP

Abstract: While the intellectual property portfolio of the German target enterprises is often counted as one of the main motivations leading to Chinese outbound acquisitions of such targets, to review the proprietorship of patents and patent applications purportedly owned by the target, especially to review whether the target substantially owns its patents and patent applications may constitute quite a complicated issue. Starting with the reform of the German Act on Employees’ Inventions (“Act”) in 2009, this article analyzes the Act on the issue of initial transfer of service inventions, illustrates the different scenarios before and after the reform regarding an employer’s claim of rights based on service inventions, points out the risks resulted by the transfer of such rights, and concludes with some remarks to the late development of the the regulatory framework of Chinese employee inventions. Key Words: German Act of Employees’ Inventions; reform; mergers and acquisitions; service invention IBM Putzmeiste KSM KION 2010 a