allow multiple assignees [was "applicant/assignee" field for patents]

mmmh
Hello,

currently there are three kinds of fields for contributors to patents: (back-translated from German, so they may be labelled differently in the original English version): inventor, lawyer/agent, co-worker. In many cases "applicant" or "assignee" would also be important fields.

Two example patents:
(two applicants, one of them is the inventor) http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO1994006160
(assignee is a company) http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0706226.html

I would welcome it very much if those fields were include in a future version of Zotero.

mmmh
  • adamsmith
    assignee exists between issuing authority and country (in the English version that is). I believe it's not currently mapped for citations, though.
  • mmmh
    edited January 2, 2012
    OK. That is translated as "Beauftrager" in the German version and I was never really sure what it was supposed to mean. I am not a patent expert, but I im not sure if this really the right translation. In most cases I know, the assignee is the company the inventor(s) work for, so it seems strange that it should be given a task by its employees, whuich would an explanation for "Beauftragter". Maybe someone with knowledge of German _and_ patens can say if "Begünstigter" might be a better alternative.

    What I have now become aware of is that the main problem is that there are several different terms depending on legislation: inventors, applicants, assignees, patent holders, etc. But in general this sums up to two positions I think:
    A) Those who invented.
    B) Those who have the full right to use the invention.

    The current assignee field allows to enter only one entitiy for B. So I would like to change my feature request to "allow multiple assignees". Then users could enter assignees, applicants, patent holders, etc into that field and I think this would be a workable solution for all (except maybe patent law researchers).
  • adamsmith
    To me Begünstigter makes more sense, a discussion on Leo suggests
    Abtretungsempfänger
    http://dict.leo.org/forum/viewUnsolvedquery.php?idThread=359507&idForum=2&lp=ende&lang=de
  • mmmh
    "Abtretungsempfänger" sounds good to me too and is even clearer than "Begünstigter".
  • adamsmith
    I've just included Abtretungsempfänger as the new translation - it should make it into copies of Zotero soon.
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