University and Employees’ Inventions in Europe and the United States

The European countries regulate ownership to intellectual property

rights (IPRs) to employee inventions in different ways. Traditionally

the European legislation could be divided into two main categories:

(a) regulation by the law of contract or practice, and (b) regulation

by statutory provisions [1]. Today most countries have introduced

at least some kind of statutory provisions, even though the matter

might to a large extent be regulated by contracts in practice.