# Employee Invention Assignment in Oregon[^about] Oregon has no employee-invention-assignment statute, so an assignment clause is bounded only by ordinary contract law, the common-law default rules, and the federal patent overlay — not a California-style own-time carve-out or notice requirement. Absent a written assignment the inventor owns unless hired to invent, subject to the employer's shop right; Oregon's noncompete statute does not reach assignment clauses, and the Oregon Court of Appeals has said in dicta that an employer may capture inventions conceived during employment and for a reasonable period after termination, so a holdover clause would be judged under Oregon's common-law reasonableness rule for partial restraints. ## Can an Oregon employer require assignment of every invention? {#statutory-carve-out} **Short answer.** There is no statutory ceiling. Unlike California or Washington, Oregon has no employee-invention-assignment statute — nothing that voids an assignment of a true own-time, own-resource invention — so an assignment clause's reach is bounded only by ordinary contract law, the common-law inventor-owns default, and the federal patent overlay. Oregon's own appellate court states the baseline the clause is drafted against: in a general employment relationship, the employee keeps the patent [^mainland-general-default][^stanford-inventor-baseline]. Because there is no statute on point, the limits come from general principles rather than a legislative carve-out. A full-text search of Oregon Revised Statutes chapter 653 (conditions of employment) and chapter 646 (trade practices) surfaces no invention-, patent-, or intellectual-property-assignment provision, and the only intellectual-property provisions our review located elsewhere in the ORS are management powers for public bodies such as community college districts — none is a private-employer assignment regime. An Oregon employer therefore starts from contract law, not a § 2870-style statutory ceiling on what an assignment promise may capture. The leading Oregon authority is *Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp.*, where the Oregon Court of Appeals stated the common-law default that any assignment clause operates against [^mainland-general-default]. "When the employment relationship is general, an employe is entitled to retain any patent he procures, even though the patent relates to the employer’s product line."[^mainland-general-default] (The single-e spelling *employe* in the quoted Oregon passages is the original reporter style, preserved here.) That default restates the federal patent premise the Supreme Court reaffirmed in *Stanford v. Roche*: absent an effective assignment, rights in an invention belong to the person who conceived it [^stanford-inventor-baseline]. "Since 1790, the patent law has operated on the premise that rights in an invention belong to the inventor."[^stanford-inventor-baseline] The practical consequence is that an Oregon employer can, in principle, contract for assignment more broadly than a California or Washington employer, because no statute carves out own-time inventions from the reach of the clause. But that breadth is not unlimited: an assignment clause is still an ordinary contract term, subject to general contract-law defenses, and where a clause operates as a restraint on the employee — most clearly a post-employment tail — Oregon's common-law reasonableness limits on partial restraints of trade come into play, as discussed under the trailing-clause question below. There is simply no statutory own-time safe harbor for the employee to invoke and no statutory ceiling for the drafter to code around. ## Must an Oregon employer notify the employee? {#employee-notice} **Short answer.** Not applicable. Because Oregon has no invention-assignment statute, there is no statutory carve-out to notify the employee about and no notice requirement of the kind California imposes under Labor Code § 2872 or Washington imposes under RCW 49.44.140(3). The contrast within Oregon law is instructive: where the legislature wants an advance-notice formality in an employment agreement, it says so — the noncompete statute conditions validity on written notice before employment begins — and it has imposed nothing similar for invention assignments [^ors-noncompete-notice-contrast]. There is nothing to give notice of. A notice requirement exists in California and Washington precisely to alert the employee to a statutory own-time carve-out that limits the assignment; Oregon has enacted no such carve-out, so there is no statutory line for a notice to mark. This is why the entry is marked not applicable rather than a bare no: the question presupposes a statutory carve-out that Oregon does not have. Oregon's legislature plainly knows how to attach a notice formality to an employment covenant when it wants one. ORS 653.295 makes a covered noncompetition agreement void and unenforceable unless, among other conditions, the employer flags it in the written employment offer well before the job starts [^ors-noncompete-notice-contrast]. "The employer informs the employee in a written employment offer received by the employee at least two weeks before the first day of the employee’s employment that a noncompetition agreement is required as a condition of employment"[^ors-noncompete-notice-contrast] No analogous formality exists for invention-assignment clauses anywhere in the chapter. What Oregon enforces instead is the agreement itself, read against the common-law categories: the duty to assign turns on whether the parties agreed otherwise and on how the employee was engaged, not on any statutory notice or disclosure step [^mainland-agreement-framework]. "Absent an agreement to the contrary, when an employe is hired to invent, or is assigned the responsibility for solving a particular problem, any resulting invention belongs to the employer."[^mainland-agreement-framework] For a multistate employer the takeaway is the inverse of the notice states: an Oregon employer neither has to give a § 2872-style notice nor can rely on one to cure an overbroad clause. The enforceability of the assignment turns entirely on the contract language and the general limits on restraints, not on any statutory notice or disclosure formality. ## Who owns an invention by default in Oregon? {#default-ownership} **Short answer.** The inventor, unless hired to invent. Absent a written assignment, Oregon follows the common-law rule that an employee in a general employment relationship keeps any patent the employee procures — even one relating to the employer's product line — while an employee hired to invent, or assigned a particular problem to solve, must assign the resulting invention to the employer. Where neither applies but the employee used the employer's time and materials, the employer gets only a shop right, a non-assignable license rather than ownership [^mainland-employee-default][^whites-hired-to-invent][^mainland-shop-right]. *Mainland Industries* anchors the default. The Oregon Court of Appeals — the highest Oregon court to have addressed employee-invention ownership in the decisions found in our review — stated the rule in terms that leave the invention with the employee unless an exception applies [^mainland-employee-default]. "When the employment relationship is general, an employe is entitled to retain any patent he procures, even though the patent relates to the employer’s product line."[^mainland-employee-default] The principal exception is the employee hired to invent. In *White's Electronics, Inc. v. Teknetics, Inc.*, the court restated the rule and applied it against an inventor who had been hired precisely because of his exceptional inventive abilities in the metal detector field: he was bound to assign the inventions he completed during his employment even though no written assignment agreement was in force at the time [^whites-hired-to-invent]. "Absent an agreement to the contrary, an employe who is hired to invent, and who succeeds during his term of service in accomplishing that task, is bound to assign to the employer all rights in the invention."[^whites-hired-to-invent] Short of hired-to-invent, an employer whose general-capacity employee built the invention on company time gets a shop right, not title. *Mainland Industries* describes the doctrine as a license, and the court's disposition drives the point home: it vacated a decree that had given the employee's confederate a license in the disputed patent and ordered an accounting and constructive trust instead, because ownership questions turn on these categories, not on who ended up holding the paper [^mainland-shop-right]. "Under that doctrine, an employer is granted a non-assignable license to a patent when an employe who works in a general or non-inventive capacity creates an invention using the employer’s time and materials."[^mainland-shop-right] Both Oregon decisions take this framework directly from *United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp.*, the Supreme Court decision each opinion cites for the hired-to-invent rule [^dubilier-hired-to-invent]. "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."[^dubilier-hired-to-invent] Two caveats on precedential weight. First, the leading Oregon cases are Court of Appeals decisions from 1982 and 1984; no Oregon Supreme Court decision on employee-invention ownership was found in our review, so the framework, while stable, has never been ratified by the state's highest court. Second, the case law is patent-focused: no Oregon authority found in our review addresses whether an unwritten default would treat copyright, trade-secret, or other subject matter the same way, which is one more reason the dependable path for an employer is a written present-assignment (*hereby assigns*) clause that transfers title automatically on conception rather than a future promise to assign. ## Are trailing-assignment (holdover) clauses enforceable in Oregon? {#holdover-clause-limit} **Short answer.** Probably yes if kept to a reasonable tail — but the Oregon authority is thin. The Oregon Court of Appeals has said, in dicta, that employers may protect themselves with contracts capturing inventions conceived during employment and for a reasonable period after termination; the clause in that very case was never enforced, and no Oregon decision found in our review has enforced or struck a trailing-assignment clause on the merits. Because assignment clauses fall outside the noncompete statute's definition, the limit a court would most likely apply is Oregon's common-law reasonableness rule for partial restraints of trade [^whites-holdover-dicta][^ors-noncompete-definition][^eldridge-reasonableness]. The on-point Oregon discussion comes from *White's Electronics*. The employer there had once obtained a written agreement assigning inventions made during employment and for six months after termination, but the agreement was not revived when the inventor was rehired, and the employer lost the post-employment piece of the case because the concept at issue had not crystallized into an invention before the inventor left. Responding to the employer's policy argument that such a rule would let employed inventors game the timing, the court pointed to holdover contracts as the fix [^whites-holdover-dicta]. "Our response is that employers could protect themselves by requiring inventors to enter into contracts that provide that the employer is entitled to any inventions conceived during the term of employment and during a reasonable period of time after termination."[^whites-holdover-dicta] That endorsement is dicta, and the opinion itself shows why: the court was explaining what the employer could have contracted for, not enforcing the clause it failed to obtain [^whites-holdover-not-enforced]. "In fact, White’s required Payne to sign such an agreement during his first period of employment. Its failure to obtain such an agreement the second time around is fatal to its case."[^whites-holdover-not-enforced] No statute supplies a cap either. ORS 653.295 imposes strict conditions on covered noncompetition agreements, but its definition reaches only a promise not to compete with the employer in providing similar products, processes, or services after termination — an invention-assignment clause promises a transfer of rights, not a forbearance from competing, so it sits outside the statute [^ors-noncompete-definition]. "‘Noncompetition agreement’ means a written agreement between an employer and employee under which the employee agrees that the employee, either alone or as an employee of another person, will not compete with the employer in providing products, processes or services that are similar to the employer’s products, processes or services for a period of time or within a specified geographic area after termination of employment."[^ors-noncompete-definition] A trailing clause so broad that it operates as a practical bar on working for a competitor could invite an argument that it should be tested under the statute by analogy, but no Oregon authority found in our review addresses that argument either way [^ors-noncompete-definition]. With the statute out of the picture, the governing framework is the common-law reasonableness rule for partial restraints of trade, which the Oregon Supreme Court stated in *Eldridge v. Johnston* [^eldridge-reasonableness]. "Three things are essential to the validity of a contract in restraint of trade: (1) it must be partial or restricted in its operation in respect either to time or place; (2) it must be on some good consideration; and (3) it must be reasonable, that is, it should afford only a fair protection to the interests of the party in whose favor it is made, and must not be so large in its operation as to interfere with the interests of the public."[^eldridge-reasonableness] Applying that test to an invention holdover is a prediction, not a holding: *White's Electronics* endorsed a reasonable-period tail without fixing any number, and no Oregon decision found in our review has decided how long is too long. The safe reading is that a short tail tied to inventions conceived or developed during employment is probably enforceable under Oregon's reasonableness framework, while an open-ended or industry-wide trailing assignment is at meaningful risk of being treated as an unreasonable restraint. > [!NOTE] > **Practice note.** > > Do not treat the holdover dicta as settled Oregon law. Ownership starts with the employee in a general employment relationship, so an Oregon employer's rights are only as good as the words that transfer them — use present-assignment (*hereby assigns*) language and get the agreement signed every time employment begins, because the one Oregon employer to litigate a holdover clause lost precisely for failing to re-obtain the agreement on rehire [^mainland-employee-default-practice][^whites-holdover-not-enforced]. Keep any trailing assignment short and tied to inventions conceived or developed during employment: the only Oregon appellate support for a tail is dicta endorsing a reasonable period after termination, with no decision found in our review enforcing one [^whites-holdover-dicta], and an overbroad tail risks being struck as an unreasonable partial restraint under the Oregon Supreme Court's three-part reasonableness test [^eldridge-reasonableness]. [^about]: By Steven Obiajulu, J.D. Published by [openagreements.org](https://openagreements.org). Last reviewed 2026-07-02. License: CC BY 4.0. Steven Obiajulu, J.D. is admitted in New York, not Oregon. This article synthesizes Oregon primary law and is not legal advice from a Oregon-admitted attorney. This article is for informational purposes only and does not create an attorney-client relationship. CC BY 4.0. Cite as Steven Obiajulu, *Employee Invention Assignment in Oregon*, OpenAgreements (last updated July 2, 2026), https://openagreements.org/practice-guides/invention-assignment/us/oregon. [^mainland-general-default]: **Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp.** — "When the employment relationship is general, an employe is entitled to retain any patent he procures, even though the patent relates to the employer’s product line." *Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp., 58 Or. App. 585, 649 P.2d 613 (Or. Ct. App. 1982).* [^stanford-inventor-baseline]: **Bd. of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular Systems** — "Since 1790, the patent law has operated on the premise that rights in an invention belong to the inventor." *Bd. of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular Sys., Inc., 563 U.S. 776 (2011).* [^ors-noncompete-notice-contrast]: **ORS 653.295** — "The employer informs the employee in a written employment offer received by the employee at least two weeks before the first day of the employee’s employment that a noncompetition agreement is required as a condition of employment" *Or. Rev. Stat. § 653.295(1)(a)(A) (2025).* [^mainland-agreement-framework]: **Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp.** — "Absent an agreement to the contrary, when an employe is hired to invent, or is assigned the responsibility for solving a particular problem, any resulting invention belongs to the employer." *Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp., 58 Or. App. 585, 649 P.2d 613 (Or. Ct. App. 1982).* [^mainland-employee-default]: **Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp.** — "When the employment relationship is general, an employe is entitled to retain any patent he procures, even though the patent relates to the employer’s product line." *Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp., 58 Or. App. 585, 649 P.2d 613 (Or. Ct. App. 1982).* [^whites-hired-to-invent]: **White's Electronics, Inc. v. Teknetics, Inc.** — "Absent an agreement to the contrary, an employe who is hired to invent, and who succeeds during his term of service in accomplishing that task, is bound to assign to the employer all rights in the invention." *White's Electronics, Inc. v. Teknetics, Inc., 67 Or. App. 63, 677 P.2d 68 (Or. Ct. App. 1984).* [^mainland-shop-right]: **Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp.** — "Under that doctrine, an employer is granted a non-assignable license to a patent when an employe who works in a general or non-inventive capacity creates an invention using the employer’s time and materials." *Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp., 58 Or. App. 585, 649 P.2d 613 (Or. Ct. App. 1982).* [^dubilier-hired-to-invent]: **United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp.** — "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." *United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp., 289 U.S. 178 (1933).* [^whites-holdover-dicta]: **White's Electronics, Inc. v. Teknetics, Inc.** — "Our response is that employers could protect themselves by requiring inventors to enter into contracts that provide that the employer is entitled to any inventions conceived during the term of employment and during a reasonable period of time after termination." *White's Electronics, Inc. v. Teknetics, Inc., 67 Or. App. 63, 677 P.2d 68 (Or. Ct. App. 1984).* [^ors-noncompete-definition]: **ORS 653.295** — "‘Noncompetition agreement’ means a written agreement between an employer and employee under which the employee agrees that the employee, either alone or as an employee of another person, will not compete with the employer in providing products, processes or services that are similar to the employer’s products, processes or services for a period of time or within a specified geographic area after termination of employment." *Or. Rev. Stat. § 653.295(8)(d) (2025).* [^eldridge-reasonableness]: **Eldridge v. Johnston** — "Three things are essential to the validity of a contract in restraint of trade: (1) it must be partial or restricted in its operation in respect either to time or place; (2) it must be on some good consideration; and (3) it must be reasonable, that is, it should afford only a fair protection to the interests of the party in whose favor it is made, and must not be so large in its operation as to interfere with the interests of the public." *Eldridge v. Johnston, 195 Or. 379, 245 P.2d 239 (Or. 1952).* [^whites-holdover-not-enforced]: **White's Electronics, Inc. v. Teknetics, Inc.** — "In fact, White’s required Payne to sign such an agreement during his first period of employment. Its failure to obtain such an agreement the second time around is fatal to its case." *White's Electronics, Inc. v. Teknetics, Inc., 67 Or. App. 63, 677 P.2d 68 (Or. Ct. App. 1984).* [^mainland-employee-default-practice]: **Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp.** — "When the employment relationship is general, an employe is entitled to retain any patent he procures, even though the patent relates to the employer’s product line." *Mainland Industries, Inc. v. Timberland Machines & Engineering Corp., 58 Or. App. 585, 649 P.2d 613 (Or. Ct. App. 1982).*