Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Letter Agreement for Owership of an Idea

Only inventions can be patented. Ideas cannot. You don't need to have built your invention in order to patent it, but you need more than just the underlying idea. If that is all you have then your application will be denied and it won't matter who owns what portion of it.

Re: Letter Agreement for Owership of an Idea

I have three comments on your question.

First, ideas alone cannot be patented. This raises the question of what you submitted to the USPTO and who prepared it for you. Preparing patent applications that get accepted is an art requiring education, experience and skill Merely describing an idea isn't sufficient.

Second, your question should probably have been asked under the "Intellectual Property" category heading on LawGuru, because the lawyers to whom such questions are referred are the ones who know about patents, ttrademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, the four most important classes of intellectual property.

Finally, for inventors who are at an early stage of researching patentability and thinking about how to prepare, file and exploit a patent, I recommend researching the various paperback self-help law books on this subject. They vary in quality, but most of them are at least somewhat helpful and probably worth the price if you read two or three of them to get a sense of how the patent process really works.

Re: Letter Agreement for Owership of an Idea

That's what patent attorneys are for; it's part of the process. Assuming that 'idea' actually means a product or invention, then you need to get competent legal help from local counsel. I can refer you to someone if you are serious about doing so.