Applicant

The owner of a patent application.

The applicant is identified separately from the inventor(s) in the patent register and any publication(s) of a patent application. Although the inventor(s) may themselves also be the applicant of a patent application for their invention, in many cases a different entity will be the applicant (such as the company that employs them). A patent application (and the resulting patent) can be owned by a natural person or a legal entity and may be jointly owned by multiple entities (although this is generally considered to be undesirable as it can lead to various complications).

Initially, the applicant will be the entity that filed the patent application. Unless the applicant is the inventor(s) of the invention to which the patent application relates, it will be necessary to indicate how the entity that filed the patent application obtained the rights to the invention from the inventor(s). Ownership of the patent application may subsequently be changed through assignment of the patent application to a new entity.