Reply #44: It is so hard to die without any heirs. [View All]

[AP]

States look so far for relatives so that it would be incredibly hard for someone to die intestate without passing their property rights to someone. And even if they don't have a relative, the rights in the invention would still pass to the state. They wouldn't just disappear.

I don't know what happens if a right in an invention passes to the state however -- it might become public property, but, more likely, some state official would become the trustee of the right and they would then be able to enforce the rights for the benefit of a trust -- but I'm really just guessing here. If the inventor died in my state, I'd definitely want to look into the possiblity that the state coffers could be filled a little bit by collecting patent royalties for this inventor who died with no relatives.

If a company is using an invention knowing that the inventor has died, they're probably still violating somebody's rights in the invention. What they're doing is just using the invention knowing that nobody was close enough to the inventor to know that there's a right to the invention out there that is being violated.

I bet if you tracked down some relatives, and told them to get a lawyer, they might be able to get some money from the invention. Of course, they'd probably be happy to settle with the company -- which means the invention would continue to be used. But, what it would mean in the short and long term for the company is that they'd have to share their profits with the relatives of the inventor.