Sharples v. McCornack

Citations

• 254 Pa. 535
• 99 A. 153
• 1916 Pa. LEXIS 763

Syllabus

<p>Equity — Patents—-Assignment—Evidence.</p> <p>In a suit in equity by a manufacturer against a former employee to procure the assignment to the plaintiff of a patent, it was alleged that the article for which the patent was granted was invented while the defendant was in plaintiff’s employ as an inventor and experimenter under an agreement providing that any new thing which defendant should produce during the term of his service, was to be the exclusive property of plaintiff. The referee found on amply sufficient evidence that before such agreement was entered into, defendant had been in plaintiff’s employ, that he had left that employ, and had invented the patented article, and that thereafter the agreement was made; and that after the making of the agreement plaintiff had the exclusive use of the invention, subject to the payment of a royalty. Held, the lower court properly refused to decree an assignment of the patent.</p>