The right to a solution created by an employee in the performance of employment duties belongs to the employer, unless otherwise agreed, but the company must assert it in time. The employee must notify you of the invention in writing, and you then have three months to assert the right in writing or file an application; otherwise the right passes to the employee. An employee whose invention is claimed is entitled to reasonable remuneration.
In an agreement on joint research and development, a company usually promises to contribute results created by its own people to the project or to license them to its partners. It can keep that promise only if it actually holds the rights to those results. With inventions this is not automatic: the statute does allocate the right to the solution to the employer, but the employer must assert it in time.
The right belongs to the company if it asserts it
The starting point is Section 11(1) of Act No. 435/2001 Coll.: where an inventor creates an invention in the performance of duties under an employment relationship, a similar working relationship or a membership relationship, the right to the solution belongs to the employer, unless otherwise agreed. The employee remains the inventor and must notify you of the invention in writing without delay and hand over the materials needed to assess it (Section 11(2)).
A period then starts running for the company from the notification. It may assert the right to the solution in writing within three months; filing an application naming the employee as the inventor also counts as an assertion (Section 11(3)). If you do not use that period, the consequence is severe:
If the employer fails to assert the right to the solution within the period under paragraph 3 in the manner under paragraph 3, or notifies the inventor in writing within that period that it is not asserting the right to the solution, that right passes to the inventor.
— Section 11(4) of Act No. 435/2001 Coll. (unofficial English translation)
Until the right is asserted or the period expires, both the company and the employee must keep the invention confidential as against third parties (Section 11(5)). In a joint project this means that the invention cannot be presented prematurely to partners outside the confidentiality regime established by the cooperation agreement.
The employee’s remuneration
If you assert the right, the employee is entitled to reasonable remuneration. Its amount depends on the technical and economic significance of the invention and on the benefit of its exploitation; account is also taken of the contribution made by the company to its creation and of the employee’s work duties. The remuneration is payable within one month of the assertion (Section 11(6)). If later exploitation brings in more than corresponds to the remuneration paid, or if the remuneration was set as a lump sum without regard to those criteria, the employee may seek additional settlement after three years from the assertion (Section 11(7)). These rights survive the end of the employment relationship (Section 11(8)). If the project partners are also to bear the cost of the remuneration, the cooperation agreement must say so expressly.
Who is not an employee
The rule applies only to employees and persons in a similar or membership relationship. If a sole trader, a consultant or an employee of an external company works on the project, the right to the solution belongs to the inventor or, as the case may be, to that person’s own employer, and your company acquires it only under an assignment agreement, which must be in writing, failing which it is invalid (Section 12(3)). Since 1 September 2026, a special rule has applied to employees of public universities and the Slovak Academy of Sciences, to whom the invention belongs unless otherwise agreed; the details are set out in our article on who owns inventions made by university researchers from September 2026.
The mechanism in Czechia is similar. The right to a patent for an employee’s invention passes to the employer unless the contract provides otherwise, and if the employer does not assert it within three months of being notified, it passes back to the inventor (Section 9 of Act No. 527/1990 Sb.).
What to put in place within the company
Establish an internal procedure setting out who receives notifications of inventions, who decides on assertion within three months and how remuneration is determined. Add provisions on the results of creative activity to the employment contracts of researchers and to contracts with external contributors. Only then can you promise project partners with confidence that you will contribute the results. We prepare the cooperation agreement and the related documents for your own people under our research and development cooperation agreement service. How rights are divided where an invention is created jointly with a partner is discussed in our answer on what each co-owner of a patent may do.
This answer provides general information on the law as at 12 September 2026. It does not constitute legal services or replace an assessment of an individual case. The details of your situation may differ. Book a consultation to discuss them.
