Legal Question in Investment Law in Connecticut
Question about ownership of patent documents
I recently purchased an item that is related to a collecting hobby of mine. It is an original set of pre-1900 patent documents for a fairly important patent. These are the documents issued to the owner of the patent by the patent office. The documents have the appropriate seals, ribbons, and signatures along with the original drawings and description. This particular patent was the basis for the explosive growth of a very prominent Connecticut-based company and established the basis for a major industry. As such, it has significant monetary value.
According to what I've been able to document so far, this, and other patent documents from the same company were rescued from a flood more than 50 years ago and have been is storage in private hands ever since. The documents have not been in the company's possession for over 50 years. In that time the company has gone through three changes of corporate ownership.
As far as I know, the company has no idea that these original documents still exist.
The company is still in business producing the same
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Question about ownership of patent documents
I think you are asking whether you can enforce these patents, since their enforcement would be worth a lot of money.
Since you said that they are pre-1900, most likely the time on the patents has expired and therefore unenforceable, but you will need to look into the patent registry to find out for sure.
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