INEQUITABLE CONDUCT
Failure, either knowingly or unknowingly, to provide the USPTO with correct inventorship information.
"Courteous" giving of inventorship may have serious negative consequences.
An erroneously identified "inventor" who was not actually involved in the conception of an invention, or an omitted inventor, may have serious consequences for the patent owner. In the extreme, such mistakes can result in the patent being invalidated. Inventorship is therefore a crucial issue in patent law.
Willful failure to properly identify all the applicable co-inventors in the patent application and resulting patent (if any) could be regarded as fraud.
EXAMPLE
A university graduate student who contributed to an invention was not named as an inventor on the associated patent application.
The patent sought to cover transgenic cotton and methods for transforming it.
Monsanto was later assigned the patent by the fellow inventors who were named on the application.
Monsanto's competitor, Aventis, discovered the unnamed inventor and sought to have them correct the inventorship on the patent and then transfer their rights to the technology to Aventis. Upon doing so Aventis received the same ownership rights as Monsanto.
If the graduate student had been named initially as an inventor, Aventis would have needed a license from Monsanto to use the technology.