Vanity Patent, Vanity Patenting

Phenomenon where the names of mostly only senior managers in an organization appear on its patents. Because being a named inventor is regarded as quite prestigious, in some organizations, senior managers will pursue patents on their “pet ideas” often perhaps ignoring (or at the expense of(given limited budgets)) patents on commercially more valuable ideas. Vanity patenting is often also associated with a failure to name joint inventors, giving rise to the problem of missing or un-named inventors.

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