返回概览 Inner Door Reinforcement

The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) has recently issued a decision regarding the obligation of an employer to furnish information to an employee inventor in view of the computation of the equitable remuneration of the employee inventor.

In this respect, the BGH has overruled a number of decisions and has held that the employee inventor generally does not have an enforceable right against the employer to receive information and a detailed rendering of accounts about the profits specifically made with the invention.

In the decision, the BGH confirmed previous case law such that, when an invention is not used only for internal purposes within the employer's company, the license analogy is generally to be regarded as a particularly adequate criterion to establish the value of the invention, which is an important parameter for the computation of the equitable remuneration of the employee inventor.

While not obliging the employer to furnish information to the employee inventor on the profits obtained with the invention, the BGH has confirmed its case law giving the employee inventor an enforceable right to obtain information on the following:

- the quantity of produced goods according to the invention, and

- a turnover generated per unit with goods according to the invention.

Particularly, the BGH has decided that the employer has a duty to provide information on delivered quantities, delivery times and delivery prices not only for a parent company, but also for subsidiaries and affiliated companies.

Specifically, in the decided case the employer was a car manufacturing company receiving inner door reinforcements to be mounted into vehicle doors from subsidiaries and affiliated companies. In this respect, the BGH decided that the parent company has to contribute in a reasonable manner to obtaining the required information from subsidiaries and affiliated companies. If necessary, the parent company may be required to exert some pressure on affiliate or subsidiary companies e.g. by the intervention of decision makers higher in hierarchy of the company.

Having denied information on the profits obtained, the BGH has also decided that the employee inventor does not have a right to information about the acquisition or production costs of the goods according to the invention, or to information about the respective distribution costs.

Download the full text of the decision X ZR 137/07 "Inner Door Reinforcement" of the BGH dated November 17, 2009 under:

http://www.mueller-bore.de/tl_files/Decisions_BGH/Inner_Door_Reinforcement.pdf

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