Can an Oklahoma employer require assignment of every invention?
There is no statutory ceiling — and no statute pointing the other way either. Oklahoma has no employee-invention-assignment statute of any kind: no §2870-style carve-out protecting an employee's own-time, own-resource inventions, and no employer-acquisition default vesting work product in the employer. The reach of an assignment clause is a matter of ordinary contract law, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court construes that reach narrowly — under Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley, an undefined contractual invention captures only patentable subject matter.
The statutory silence runs in both directions. Neither the labor title nor the contracts title of the Oklahoma Statutes contains an employee-invention-assignment provision, and the only statute in the code addressing inventions at all — the Invention Development Services Act, 15 O.S. §§ 680–689 — is a consumer-protection law regulating invention-promotion firms that sell development and marketing services to inventors; it says nothing about employment. Oklahoma's contract code descends from the Dakota Territory Field Code — 15 O.S. § 217, the restraint-of-trade rule discussed in the trailing-clause question below, carries a source note tracing to R.L.1910, § 978, the same lineage as California's Business and Professions Code § 16600 and North Dakota's restraint statute — but the employer-acquisition companion that lineage produced in some other Dakota-derived codes, a rule vesting in the employer everything an employee acquires by virtue of the employment, appears nowhere in the current Oklahoma Statutes.
What bounds an Oklahoma assignment clause instead is judicial construction. In Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley, a research employee under a disclose-and-assign contract developed a well-log-analysis software system, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that where the contract does not define the term, an invention must be patentable to fall within the assignment .
The consequence in Amoco itself was that the software system — unpatentable under the patent law of 1980 — fell outside the assignment clause entirely, leaving the employee free to use it .
The 1980 premise that software was unpatentable reflects the patent law of its day and should not be read as putting software outside Oklahoma assignment clauses today. The durable holding is the construction rule: a contract that leaves invention undefined captures only patentable subject matter . The drafting consequence is to enumerate expressly — software, data, know-how, improvements, and other work product, whether or not patentable — rather than relying on a court to read unpatentable assets into an undefined term. The other boundary on assignment-clause reach is temporal: a clause that extends past the end of employment runs into Oklahoma's restraint-of-trade statute, addressed in the trailing-clause question below.
Sources for this answer
Case law · 1980-01-15
A.1 Amoco Production Co. v. LindleyAmoco Production Co. v. Lindley holds that where an employment contract does not define the term, an invention must be patentable — whether or not actually patented — to be classified as an invention for purposes of determining ownership under the contract, a construction rule that bounds the reach of an undefined assignment clause.
Both definitions are based on patent law; thus it follows that “invention”, to be so classified for purposes of determining ownership under the contract, must be patentable whether it is or not.
See Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley, 1980 OK 6, 609 P.2d 733.
Case law · 1980-01-15
A.2 Amoco Production Co. v. LindleyAmoco Production Co. v. Lindley held that the employee's software system — unpatentable under the patent law of the day — was not an invention within the undefined assignment clause, so on the contract alone the employee could disclose it or use it for his own benefit.
The software system is not an invention, so on the sole basis of the contract Mr. Lindley could disclose it, or use it for his own benefit.
See Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley, 1980 OK 6, 609 P.2d 733.
Must an Oklahoma employer notify the employee?
Not applicable. Oklahoma has no invention-assignment statute, so there is no statutory carve-out to notify the employee about and no notice duty of the kind California imposes under Labor Code § 2872 or Washington imposes under RCW 49.44.140(3). What Oklahoma enforces instead is contractual: the employer's rights in an employee's invention, if any, spring from the employment agreement itself, so any disclosure or assignment duty arises from the contract rather than from a notice-backed statute .
There is nothing to give notice of. The California and Washington notice duties exist to alert the employee to a statutory own-time carve-out that limits the assignment; Oklahoma has enacted no such carve-out, so there is no statutory line for a notice to mark. The one Oklahoma statute that does impose invention-related disclosure duties — the Invention Development Services Act — directs them at invention-promotion firms selling services to inventors, not at employers, so it creates no employment-side notice obligation.
The contract is where Oklahoma's analysis lives. In Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley, the Oklahoma Supreme Court approved the trial judge's statement that the employer's right to an employee's invention, if there is any, springs from the contract of employment .
For a multistate employer the takeaway mirrors the other no-statute states: a confidential-information-and-invention-assignment agreement will often carry a § 2872-style notice and a prior-inventions schedule anyway, and in Oklahoma that is portability, not compliance. The notice neither is required nor cures anything — the enforceability of the assignment turns on the contract language and, for any post-employment reach, on the restraint-of-trade limits discussed below.
Sources for this answer
Case law · 1980-01-15
B.1 Amoco Production Co. v. LindleyAmoco Production Co. v. Lindley, approving the trial court's statement of the rule, supports the rule that the employer's rights in an employee's invention spring from the employment agreement — absent an express or implied agreement the invention remains the employee's property — so in Oklahoma any disclosure or assignment duty arises from the contract, not from a notice-requiring statute.
were it otherwise but for an express agreement or implied agreement in the employment relationship, then the employee’s invention remains the property of the employee.
See Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley, 1980 OK 6, 609 P.2d 733.
Who owns an invention by default in Oklahoma?
The employee, unless an express or implied agreement gives it to the employer. Oklahoma has direct authority on the point: in Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley the Oklahoma Supreme Court approved the rule that absent an express or implied agreement in the employment relationship, the employee's invention remains the employee's property. The main exception — the employee hired to invent — operates in Oklahoma as implied-in-fact contract law: a federal court applying Oklahoma law in Skycam, LLC v. Bennett ran the hired-to-invent framework through Oklahoma's implied-contract statutes and held the employer takes only what the employee was actually employed to invent.
Amoco anchors the default. The employee there worked under a disclose-and-assign contract, and the court's analysis began from the premise that the employer's rights, if any, spring from that contract — the trial judge's formulation, which the Supreme Court called correct, put the default squarely with the employee .
That default matches the federal baseline. Under Stanford v. Roche, rights in an invention start with the inventor , and under United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp. an employee who was not hired to invent ordinarily keeps the invention, leaving the employer at most an equitable shop right — a non-exclusive license to use it, not ownership .
Skycam, LLC v. Bennett shows how the hired-to-invent exception actually runs in Oklahoma. After a bench trial in a dispute with no express assignment agreement, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma stated the framework by quoting the Federal Circuit's decision in Banks v. Unisys Corp. .
The court grounded that doctrine in Oklahoma contract law rather than treating it as free-floating federal common law .
“Oklahoma law recognizes implied contracts. 15 O.S. § 131.”
And the exception has real limits: the court found an employed-to-invent relationship existed, yet still denied the employer ownership because the employee had not been employed to invent everything the disputed patent claim covered .
On the shop right, Oklahoma state courts have said almost nothing — no Oklahoma state-court decision found in our review has adopted or developed the doctrine. The assumed background is the federal framework of Dubilier, and Skycam shows that Oklahoma courts channel these employer-side doctrines through implied-in-fact contract law rather than a distinct state doctrine.
Because ownership starts with the inventor and the exceptions are narrow and fact-bound, the dependable path for an Oklahoma employer remains a written present-assignment clause (hereby assigns) that moves title automatically on conception, rather than the statute-free default or a future promise to assign .
Sources for this answer
Case law · 1980-01-15
C.1 Amoco Production Co. v. LindleyAmoco Production Co. v. Lindley, approving the trial court's statement of the rule, supports Oklahoma's default that absent an express or implied agreement in the employment relationship, the employee's invention remains the property of the employee.
were it otherwise but for an express agreement or implied agreement in the employment relationship, then the employee’s invention remains the property of the employee.
See Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley, 1980 OK 6, 609 P.2d 733.
Case law · 2011-06-06
C.4 Bd. of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular SystemsStanford v. Roche confirms the long-standing premise of U.S. patent law that rights in an invention belong to the inventor — the federal baseline Oklahoma's employee-owns default matches, and the reason a written present assignment is still needed for clean legal title.
Since 1790, the patent law has operated on the premise that rights in an invention belong to the inventor.
See Bd. of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular Sys., Inc., 563 U.S. 776 (2011).
Case law · 1933-05-08
C.5 United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp.United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp. supplies the framework the Oklahoma cases draw on — an employee hired to make an invention must assign the resulting patent, while an employee not hired to invent ordinarily keeps the invention subject at most to the employer's shop right.
One employed to make an invention, who succeeds, during his term of service, in accomplishing that task, is bound to assign to his employer any patent obtained.
See United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp., 289 U.S. 178 (1933).
Case law · 2012-09-30
C.6 Skycam, LLC v. BennettSkycam, LLC v. Bennett, applying Oklahoma law, states the two exceptions to the inventor-owns default — an express contract, and the hired-to-invent doctrine — quoting the Federal Circuit's formulation in Banks v. Unisys Corp., 228 F.3d 1357, 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2000).
Courts recognize two exceptions to this rule: first, where the employee is a party to an express contract giving the employer the patent rights and second, “where an employee is hired to invent something or solve a particular problem, the property of the invention related to this effort may belong to the employer.”
See Skycam, LLC v. Bennett, 900 F. Supp. 2d 1264 (N.D. Okla. 2012).
Case law · 2012-09-30
C.2 Skycam, LLC v. BennettSkycam, LLC v. Bennett grounds the hired-to-invent doctrine in Oklahoma's implied-contract statute — the court applied the exception as Oklahoma implied-in-fact contract law under 15 O.S. § 131 rather than as free-standing federal common law.
Oklahoma law recognizes implied contracts. 15 O.S. § 131.
See Skycam, LLC v. Bennett, 900 F. Supp. 2d 1264 (N.D. Okla. 2012).
Case law · 2012-09-30
C.3 Skycam, LLC v. BennettSkycam, LLC v. Bennett shows the claim-scope limit of the hired-to-invent exception — the court found an employed-to-invent relationship yet denied the employer ownership because the employee was not employed to invent the entirety of the patent claim at issue.
Because Bennett was not employed to invent the entirety of the aerial camera system described in independent Claim 1, the court concludes Skycam is not entitled to ownership of the invention described therein.
See Skycam, LLC v. Bennett, 900 F. Supp. 2d 1264 (N.D. Okla. 2012).
Are trailing-assignment (holdover) clauses enforceable in Oklahoma?
Untested — and the framework a court would apply is statutory voidness, not reasonableness balancing. No Oklahoma decision found in our review addresses a post-employment trailing-assignment clause. The statute such a clause would be tested under is 15 O.S. § 217, which voids a contract restraining anyone from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business to that extent, outside a short list of statutory safe harbors that no invention assignment fits. Section 219A(B) separately voids any employment-contract provision in conflict with the customer non-solicitation regime, and Oklahoma courts strike an out-of-band covenant rather than narrowing it to something enforceable.
The statutory text does the work. Section 217 is Field Code text — its source note traces to R.L.1910, § 978, the same Dakota-derived lineage as California's Business and Professions Code § 16600 — and it voids covered restraints outright, subject only to the exceptions the statute names .
The safe harbors are few and specific: sale-of-goodwill covenants (§ 218), partnership-dissolution covenants (§ 219), the direct-solicitation-of-established-customers covenant permitted by § 219A — the regime enacted by the 2001 act whose section numbering the third exception clause of § 217 cross-references — and employee anti-raiding clauses (§ 219B). A trailing invention assignment fits none of them.
Section 219A adds an overlay that matters for employment agreements specifically: any provision in conflict with the section is void by its own terms .
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has applied the framework to strike conventional covenants that exceed what the safe harbors allow .
The U.S. Supreme Court later vacated that 2011 decision on arbitration-procedure grounds, so the void rule's firmest anchors are the statute itself and Autry v. Acosta, Inc. . Autry supplies the anti-severance datum: the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals held a customer non-solicit that reached indirect solicitation invalid — and refused to rescue it by deleting the single offending word .
The disposition was voidness, not narrowing .
Nor is there a reasonableness rescue waiting outside the safe harbors. The rule-of-reason analysis that survives in Oklahoma operates within the § 219A permission — Inergy Propane, LLC v. Lundy held that § 219A did not abandon the rule of reason for the covenants the statute allows .
Reasonableness in Oklahoma is a filter applied inside a statutory permission, not a doctrine for saving a restraint that falls outside every permission.
Whether § 217 reaches a trailing invention assignment at all is the genuinely open threshold question. A present assignment of inventions conceived during employment allocates ownership of existing work product; it does not restrain the former employee from exercising a profession, so it likely sits outside § 217 altogether . A trailing clause that captures inventions first conceived after employment ends operates differently — it burdens the former employee's ability to invent for a new employer or for the employee's own account, which is the kind of practical restraint the statute addresses. The Legislature has shown it knows how to take a covenant type outside the statute when it wants to — § 219B directs that a qualifying anti-raiding clause is not to be construed as a restraint from exercising a lawful profession — and it has enacted no such exemption for trailing invention assignments . If a court characterizes an untethered holdover as a restraint, the consequence is voidness to that extent — invalidation of the offending reach — and Autry forecloses the hope that the court will redraft the clause into something enforceable.
Sources for this answer
Primary law
D.1 15 O.S. § 217PDFSection 217 voids any contract that restrains a person from exercising a lawful profession, trade, or business to that extent, outside the statutory safe harbors — the void-outright framework a post-employment trailing-assignment clause that functions as a restraint would be tested under.
Every contract by which any one is restrained from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind, otherwise than as provided by Sections 218 and 219 of this title, or otherwise than as provided by Section 2 of this act, is to that extent void.
See Okla. Stat. tit. 15, § 217.
Primary law
D.4 15 O.S. § 219APDFSection 219A(A) is the employment safe harbor, and it is narrow — a former employee may be barred only from directly soliciting the established customers of the former employer, a permission a trailing invention-assignment clause does not fit.
A person who makes an agreement with an employer, whether in writing or verbally, not to compete with the employer after the employment relationship has been terminated, shall be permitted to engage in the same business as that conducted by the former employer or in a similar business as that conducted by the former employer as long as the former employee does not directly solicit the sale of goods, services or a combination of goods and services from the established customers of the former employer.
See Okla. Stat. tit. 15, § 219A(A).
Primary law
D.2 15 O.S. § 219APDFSection 219A(B) affirmatively voids any employment-contract provision in conflict with the statute — the overlay that strikes conflicting covenant language in an employment agreement directly.
Any provision in a contract between an employer and an employee in conflict with the provisions of this section shall be void and unenforceable.
See Okla. Stat. tit. 15, § 219A(B).
Primary law
D.5 15 O.S. § 219BPDFSection 219B shows the Legislature's template for taking a covenant type outside § 217 — a qualifying anti-raiding clause shall not be construed as a restraint from exercising a lawful profession — and no comparable exemption exists for trailing invention assignments.
A contract or contractual provision which prohibits an employee or independent contractor of a person or business from soliciting, directly or indirectly, actively or inactively, the employees or independent contractors of that person or business to become employees or independent contractors of another person or business shall not be construed as a restraint from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind.
See Okla. Stat. tit. 15, § 219B.
Case law · 2011-11-22
D.6 Howard v. Nitro-Lift Technologies, L.L.C.Howard reflects Oklahoma's rule that covenants exceeding what § 219A allows are void as against the legislatively expressed public policy — the decision was vacated on arbitration-procedure grounds, but the statutory rule it applied remains good law.
The non-competition contracts go well beyond the bounds of what is allowable under § 219A and violate the legislatively expressed public policy.
See Howard v. Nitro-Lift Techs., L.L.C., 2011 OK 98, 273 P.3d 20, vacated on other grounds sub nom. Nitro-Lift Techs., L.L.C. v. Howard, 568 U.S. 17 (2012).
Case law · 2017-11-14
D.3 Autry v. Acosta, Inc.Autry holds that an overbroad covenant cannot be brought into compliance with § 219A by deleting the offending word — Oklahoma courts refuse even single-word severance, so an overbroad holdover clause faces invalidation, not judicial narrowing.
We find that the remedy for this Non-Solicitation Agreement's shortcomings is not quite that simple and it cannot be made to comply with § 219A by merely deleting the word "indirectly."
See Autry v. Acosta, Inc., 2018 OK CIV APP 8, 410 P.3d 1017.
Case law · 2017-11-14
D.7 Autry v. Acosta, Inc.Autry holds that the overbroad covenant was void and unenforceable as against Oklahoma public policy under § 219A — the disposition for an out-of-band covenant is voidness, not reformation.
Examined under the lens of § 219A, the Non-Solicitation Agreement is void and unenforceable as against Oklahoma's public policy expressed by the Legislature's enactment of that section.
See Autry v. Acosta, Inc., 2018 OK CIV APP 8, 410 P.3d 1017.
Case law · 2008-08-13
D.8 Inergy Propane, LLC v. LundyInergy Propane, LLC v. Lundy holds that § 219A did not abandon the common-law rule of reason for covenants within the statutory safe harbor — reasonableness in Oklahoma is a filter inside a statutory permission, not a rescue doctrine for restraints outside it.
That does not, however, require abandonment of the rule of reason analysis required by previously established case law.
See Inergy Propane, LLC v. Lundy, 2009 OK CIV APP 8, 219 P.3d 547.
Primary law
D.9 15 O.S. § 217PDFSection 217 voids a covered restraint to that extent — invalidation of the offending reach rather than reformation — so an untethered holdover clause characterized as a restraint falls rather than being trimmed.
Every contract by which any one is restrained from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind, otherwise than as provided by Sections 218 and 219 of this title, or otherwise than as provided by Section 2 of this act, is to that extent void.
See Okla. Stat. tit. 15, § 217.
Case law · 2017-11-14
D.10 Autry v. Acosta, Inc.Autry refused to save an overbroad covenant by deleting even a single offending word — a drafter cannot count on an Oklahoma court preserving a less burdensome version of an overbroad trailing clause.
We find that the remedy for this Non-Solicitation Agreement's shortcomings is not quite that simple and it cannot be made to comply with § 219A by merely deleting the word "indirectly."
See Autry v. Acosta, Inc., 2018 OK CIV APP 8, 410 P.3d 1017.
Case law · 2003-06-11
D.11 Eakle v. Grinnell Corp.Eakle states that an Oklahoma forum court will not apply a contractually chosen foreign law where doing so would violate Oklahoma public policy — a foreign governing-law clause does not give a trailing-assignment clause room Oklahoma's restraint statute denies it.
As this general rule recognizes, however, the forum court will not apply the law chosen by the contracting parties should doing so violate the public policy of the forum state.
See Eakle v. Grinnell Corp., 272 F. Supp. 2d 1304 (E.D. Okla. 2003).
Primary law
D.12 15 O.S. § 219APDFSection 219A(B) voids any employment-contract provision in conflict with the statute by its own force — the conflicting clause is void and unenforceable regardless of what law the contract selects.
Any provision in a contract between an employer and an employee in conflict with the provisions of this section shall be void and unenforceable.
See Okla. Stat. tit. 15, § 219A(B).
Because 15 O.S. § 217 voids a covered restraint to that extent and Oklahoma courts will not redraft the offending words — Autry v. Acosta, Inc. refused to save a covenant by deleting even a single word — tether any trailing-assignment clause to inventions conceived or reduced to practice during employment, or derived from the employer's trade secrets or confidential information, and keep any post-employment tail short and narrow. An untethered holdover that sweeps in a former employee's future inventions functions as a de facto non-compete and risks being struck rather than trimmed.
Do not plan on papering an Oklahoma employee with another state's governing law to give a trailing-assignment clause room Oklahoma law denies it. A federal court applying Oklahoma choice-of-law principles has stated that the forum court will not apply the law chosen by the contracting parties where doing so would violate the public policy of the forum state, and § 219A(B) voids any conflicting employment-contract provision by its own force — so a multistate employer should expect the holdover analysis above to apply to an Oklahoma employee regardless of the contract's governing-law clause.