EMPLOI ET PROPRIETE INTELLECTUELLE - MEDITATIONS SUR LES DROITS MORAUX DU SALARIE

Abstract

"The product of the employee's labour belongs to the employer". This nearly axiomatic assertion finds a direct application in our law of intellectual property the work created by the employee in the course of his employment belongs to the employer, who is the first owner of the copyright or the right to obtain a patent on this work. The Copyright Act says so explicitly and the courts, despite the silence of the Patent Act, have decided similarly. One must wonder, however, what becomes of the moral rights conferred upon an author by the Copyright Act, when the author is an employee : is the employee author stripped of those rights also or does he retain them, even against the employer? The same question can be asked with regard to the right to a patent of invention : although the Patent Act does not explicitly recognise any moral right to the inventor, it can be argued that it does so implicitly and that this right should benefit the inventor-employee as well.