The change of the global environment has created situations where collaboration of two or more people in research, development or creating an invention has become increasingly common. It may sound fair and simple that such “joint” collaborative development outcome should be “jointly owned” between the parties. In practice, joint ownership of intellectual property is anything but simple: it can lead to uncertainties about the need to apply for to the need to commercialize and even the need to enforce such rights.

What is Joint Ownership? Joint Ownership” arises where two or more people have an ownership interest in certain property; whether that is real property or personal property.

Joint ownership in commonly created inventions, copyrights, designs and trademarks according to the Austrian law are discussed in this article. InventionsUnder Austrian law it is undoubted that more than one (legal) person may own one invention and its resulting patents.

This article has the purpose of discussing—not emotionally—the rules established by Brazilian laws concerning joint ownership of IP and the potential questions and problems resulting there from.

This short essay intends to provide an overview of the general rules concerning entitlement to IPRs under Chilean Law and to alert the reader of issues that can arise when entering agreements concerning IPRs, joint ownership and subsidized innovations under Chilean law.

The aim of this article is to outline the rules applicable to joint ownership of IP in the Czech Republic and highlight the questions they raise and problems they pose. It focuses primarily on copyright and patents but similar rules would apply also to other types of IP.

Under German law, there is no uniform statutory rule regarding joint ownership of Intellectual Property (IP) rights. Article 8 of the German Copyright Act (UrhG) addresses this issue in some detail, whereas in the case of patents, trademarks and other industrial property rights, the related provisions are restricted to simply acknowledging the mere possibility of joint ownerships, leaving open details and legal consequences.

This article looks at joint ownership of IPR in India, against a backdrop of a growing, networked economy, greater sophistication in business models and increased interdependencies in business operations.

In order to gain an appreciation of the treatment of joint ownership rights in Israel, it is important to understand both the special environment in Israel within which jointly owned intellectual property rights are created as well as the legal context that governs joint ownership rights under Israel law.

This article sets out briefly the position in Malaysia in relation to joint ownership in patents, copyrights and trademarks as well as illustrating some of the theoretical and practical problems, faced by joint owners of Intellectual Property under Malaysian laws.

From a purely legislative perspective, this writer, in the light of the Spanish laws in force in relation to patents, trademarks, industrial designs and intellectual property, must establish the following starting-point: in Spain, the regulation of the co-ownership of industrial and intellectual property rights has not been amended since its entry into force.

In Turkey, Intellectual Property ownership rights of are generally addressed in the applicable laws regulating patents.

This article considers the default rights of joint owners of certain types of IP under English law, the problems that may arise if IP is jointly owned, and some alternative ways in which rights in IP could be handled.

In the United States, all intellectual property rights may be jointly-owned. The legal consequence of such an ownership structure are different for each type of intellectual property. Accordingly, this article address patents, trademarks and copyrights separately.