독일 직무발명제도에 대한 연구 - 직무발명 권리귀속과 직무발명 보상금산정을 중심으로 -

Germany has the Employee Invention Act to regulate the employee invention system. To be recognized as an employee invention in Germany, it must have been completed during the period of a valid employment, resulting from activities imposed on the employee by the employer, or principally resulting from the employee's experience or work in the employer's enterprise. The German system adopts the “inventorism” regarding the belonging of right to employee inventions. The Act provides detailed regulations on the procedure by which an employer can acquire the right to obtain a patent for an employee invention originally belonged to an employee. An important matter is that before the employer exercise the right to transfer the right to the invention, if the employee assigns the right to a third party, the disposition has no legal effect on the employer. It presents a “one solution” that can solve the problem that employers cannot acquire patent rights for employee inventions due to the double assignment of the inventions occurring in Korea. In Germany, an employee who assigns the right to an employee invention to an employer has the right to claim compensation for employee invention. Especially Germany has Guidelines for Calculating Employee Invention Compensation to present specific standards for calculating compensation for employee invention. The guidelines are advisory only and are not legally binding. According to the guidelines, it is calculated by multiplying the “value of an invention” by the “employee's contribution” to it. In calculating the value of an invention, the 'licensing analogy method' is most commonly used. According to this, the value of an invention is calculated after deducting “related costs” from “employer's sales” resulting from the sale of products embodying employee inventions, and then multiplying by the “royalty rate”.