The law relating to employee inventions regulates the legal situation of employees in connection with inventions of theirs which are subject to the laws on patents and utility models.

A distinction is made between service inventions and free inventions.
Service inventions arise either from the activity the employee is expected to carry out in the company or they result to a decisive extent from experiences accumulated or work carried out in the company. Free inventions on the other hand are ones made by the employee during the period of his employment, but which neither originate from the employee’s area of responsibility in the employer’s company nor do they arise to a significant extent from experiences accumulated or work carried out in the company.

Free inventions do not represent the result of work carried out for the company. Rather, they are attributed to the private sphere of life.

In the case of a service invention, the employee has a duty to notify his employer of the invention immediately and to maintain professional secrecy. The notification should be separate and not combined with other messages. The technical task in question, the solution found and the way in which the service invention materialized should be described. Furthermore the employee is obliged to keep the service invention secret. This duty remains in force even following termination of employment.

Following receipt of the notification from his employee, the employer can make claim to the service invention by writing to the employee in question. An unlimited claim to an invention results in the employer becoming the legal successor (in title) to the employee as far as the invention is concerned. The employer is then obliged to apply in his home country for the granting of protective rights to the service invention of which he has been notified. This obligation on the part of the employer to register the invention no longer applies if the employee agrees to the invention not being registered or if valid company interests make it important for the notified service invention not to be made public by application for registration as a protective right.

A service invention, of which the employer has been notified, remains in the ownership of the employee if the employer does not make a claim to it. The employee then has the right to exploit it to the full himself. If the employer does however make a claim to the service invention, then the employee has a right to appropriate compensation.