Taking a Slice of the Pie: An Empirical and Theoretical Inquiry on Allegedly Challengeable Inventorships

Abstract

This article argues for a more widespread existence of inventorship misrepresentation by comparing the US, Taiwanese, and Chinese patents owned by US, Taiwanese, and Chinese healthcare companies respectively. The companies were selected from NASDAQ, the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation, and the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange while the patents were all retrieved from their respective official databases. Our empirical analyses show that, in comparison to the US patents owned by the US healthcare companies, a significantly higher likelihood of “allegedly challengeable” inventorship exists in the Taiwanese and Chinese patents owned by the Taiwanese and Chinese healthcare companies. This conclusion is based on statistical results, including the findings of representative Taiwanese and Chinese companies having more than half of Taking a Slice of the Pie: An Empirical and Theoretical Inquiry on Allegedly allengeable Inventorships 185 Volume 61 – Number 1 their 100-plus patents invented by solely management-level employees (instead of their R&D personnel), while such a phenomenon does not exist in their US counterparts. We argue that the existences of these inventorship misrepresentations are not only unethical, but also damaging to society through the creation of severe external diseconomies. This article starts by studying the enormous social costs incurred from destructed job signaling systems —first introduced by Nobel laureate, Michael Spence— for which we further argue with patent asset-specific applications. With the empirically-proven inventorship misrepresentation, we also question the justification of introducing patent inventorship in criminal sentence commutation decisions in China. Finally, we argue that without prompt correction, these commonly seen inventorship srepresentations, which should never exist, will undermine the very purpose of patent law by weakening inventors’ incentives to innovate or to disclose their inventions. We then offer comprehensive accounts on inventorship misrepresentation from both personal and institution-wide perspectives. First, we argue that private parties may become over-incentivized to “take a slice” of any benefits associated with being an inventor. We also find that the differences in legal landscapes and culturaldimensions are also important contributing factors to why some companies misrepresent their inventors. Finally, based on the insights of behavioral law and economics studies, we propose the imposition of legal costs and the mandatory disclosure of inventive contribution nformation as the two solutions to deter these undesirable conducts.