Can a minor be an author and patent holder?

General concept of legal capacity

Anyone, both an adult and a child, can engage in inventive activity. In the Russian Federation, as well as throughout the world, there are a huge number of innovative child development centers aimed at raising young Kulibins (a family name of a famous Russian mechanic and inventor).

However, for further successful commercialization, it is not enough to implement your engineering idea by creating a prototype, searching for interested investors, launching a startup or business project. To protect a technical or design solution developed by a young talent from plagiarism, it must be registered as an invention, utility model or industrial design, respectively, and obtain a patent from the Federal Institute of Industrial Property (FIPS).

As a rule, a person is recognized as fully capable from the day following the day on which he turns 18 years old; from this day the person has the right to independently fulfill his rights and obligations.

For children under 18 years of age, the law applies several main definitions: minor and emancipated, which characterize the presence of a certain amount of rights and responsibilities at a certain age.

According to the law, a minor (infant) is a person who has not reached the age of 14 years and has incomplete legal capacity.

A minor is considered a person between the ages of 14 and 18, who also has partial legal capacity.

It is possible to obtain full legal capacity ahead of schedule only in two cases.

• The first case is when a teenager under 18 years of age gets married, thereby acquiring full legal capacity from the date of receipt of the marriage certificate, but does not lose it even in the event of a divorce. However, he can enter into marriage before adulthood only if there are good reasons (actually established marriage relationship with a citizen who has not reached the age of marriage, pregnancy, the birth of a child among teenagers, etc.) and only with the consent of local government authorities (territorial guardianship authority). A teenager can get married between the ages of 14 and 16, depending on the region of the Russian Federation. For example, in the Moscow, Vladimir, Vologda, Oryol, Samara, Tambov and Tula regions, the marriage age is set at 14 years. In the Ryazan, Murmansk and Chelyabinsk regions - from 15 years old, in the Chechen Republic - from 16 years old.
• The second case is emancipation: declaring a minor fully capable from the age of 16, which is carried out by decision of the guardianship and trusteeship authority - with the consent of both parents, adoptive parents, trustee, or in the absence of such consent - by decision of a court of general jurisdiction. This procedure is available only to teenagers who have gained financial independence from their parents, while conducting independent business activities or working under an employment contract. It should be noted that such sources of income as profit from securities, bank deposits, rental of real estate, inheritance, etc. are not taken into account. Thus, the teenager should not have actual income, but a confirmed opportunity for work or entrepreneurial activity with regular income.

In this article we will look at what rights a person has and at what age a person can become the author of an invention, utility model or industrial design. Let’s answer the question: “Only an adult and a minor child who has entered into marriage or been declared “emancipated” and has full legal capacity can dispose of exclusive rights and make transactions with intellectual property, or not?”

Intellectual property rights

In accordance with Article 1347 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the author of the result of intellectual activity is the citizen whose creative work created it.

FIPS recognizes as the author(s) of the result of intellectual activity an individual or group of persons indicated in the application for a patent as the author(s).

From the provisions of Article 18 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, it follows that a person may have author’s rights to inventions and other legally protected results of intellectual activity from birth. Thus, you can become an author at any age, including “young ones.”

However, despite the child having copyrights, the exercise of rights to the intellectual property object created by him has a number of features related both to the age of such persons and to the legal regime of the objects themselves.

Minors (children under 14 years old) in accordance with Art. 28 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation cannot make transactions; only their legal representatives (parents, adoptive parents, guardians) can do this for them. On their own, “minors” have the right to carry out only small household transactions that do not require notarization and state registration, including those aimed at obtaining benefits free of charge. Transactions for the disposal of intellectual rights are not included in this category.

Thus, until the age of 14, a citizen cannot exercise property rights, including independently dispose of exclusive rights to a protected result of intellectual activity.

In this regard, a child who created an invention, utility model, or industrial design under the age of 14 will be recognized as its author, but only his legal representative will be able to register the object, obtain a patent, and subsequently make any transactions.

Minors (children from 14 to 18 years old) are fully legal, but due to objective medical and psychological characteristics of the individual and lack of sufficient maturity, their legal capacity is partial, while with regard to exclusive rights to a protected result of intellectual activity, the situation for them is different.

In accordance with Art. 26 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, these persons have the right to independently, without the consent of their legal representatives, exercise the rights of the author of a work or other result of intellectual activity protected by law. Therefore, upon reaching the age of 14, a “minor”, not even an “emancipated” citizen or one who entered into an “early” marriage, who is the author of a technical or design solution, can exercise both personal non-property and property and other rights in relation to the created them the results of intellectual activity. In particular, he has the right to use an invention, utility model or industrial design in any way that does not contradict the law, dispose of exclusive rights by concluding licensing agreements, alienating rights, etc.