New Rules for Remuneration Payments for Employee-Invented Patentable Objects

On September 1, 2026, the new Rules for the Payment of Remuneration for Employee-Created Inventions, Utility Models and Industrial Designs (the “Rules”) entered into force. The Rules establish the rates, procedure and deadlines for such remuneration payments. This article explains when an object of patent rights qualifies as an employee-created object and how an employer must pay remuneration if no relevant agreement has been concluded between the employer and the author of the object.

What Qualifies as an Employee-Created Object of Patent Rights

Under Article 1349 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, objects of patent rights are results of intellectual activity in the scientific and technological field that meet the requirements established by Chapter 72 of the Civil Code.

Such objects include:

• Inventions – technical solutions in any field relating to a product (including, in particular, a device, substance, microorganism strain, or cell culture of plants or animals) or a process (a process of performing actions on a material object using material means), including the use of a product or process for a specific purpose (Paragraph 1, Article 1350 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation);
• Utility models – technical solutions relating to a device (Paragraph 1, Article 1351 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation);
• Industrial designs – solutions determining the appearance of an industrial or handicraft product (Paragraph 1, Article 1352 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).

An object of patent rights qualifies as an employee-created object if it is created by an employee in connection with the performance of their employment duties or a specific assignment from the employer (Article 1370 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).

It is important to note that, for an object to qualify as an employee-created object, it is not necessary for the employment contract, job description, or other document defining the employee’s duties to expressly provide for the creation of specific objects or the improvement of known technical solutions.

What matters is that the object was created or improved within the scope of the employee’s employment duties, which arise from the employee’s job function itself or are specified in a separate assignment or instruction from the employer.

In addition, court practice shows that an object may be recognized as an employee-created object even where no employment contract existed between the author and the organization, provided that the author was actually allowed to perform the relevant work with the knowledge or on the instructions of the employer (Resolution of the Presidium of the Court for Intellectual Property Rights dated July 11, 2022, No. S01-800/2022, in Case No. SIP-353/2021).

At the same time, the use by an employee of the employer’s financial, technical or other resources does not, in itself, mean that the resulting invention, utility model or industrial design qualifies as an employee-created object (Paragraph 5, Article 1370 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).

Procedure for Paying Remuneration in the Absence of an Agreement

As a general rule, the amount, terms, and procedure for payment of remuneration for an employee-created invention, utility model, or industrial design are established by an agreement between the employee and the employer (Paragraph 4, Article 1370 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). If no such agreement has been concluded, the employer is required to pay remuneration to the employee in accordance with the rules established by the Government of the Russian Federation (Paragraph 5, Article 1246 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).

Previously, remuneration payments were governed by the rules approved by Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 1848 dated November 16, 2020 (as amended on June 2, 2023). As of September 1, 2026, those rules cease to apply, and employers must comply with the new Rules, which establish the grounds, deadlines, and procedure for calculating remuneration (the “Calculation Procedure”), as follows:

A lump-sum remuneration payment is made to the employee if the employer:

• obtains a patent;
• decides to keep information about the object confidential;
• transfers the right to obtain a patent to another person, except where the right is transferred under a relevant agreement.

In these cases, remuneration is calculated according to the formula set out in Paragraph 1 of the Calculation Procedure and must be paid to the employee no later than two months from the date on which the relevant grounds for payment arise.

• fails to obtain a patent for an application it has filed due to reasons attributable to the employer (for example, failure to pay the required fee, failure to meet a deadline for submitting documents, or failure to submit all documents required for registration).

In this case, remuneration is also calculated in accordance with Paragraph 1 of the Calculation Procedure, but must be paid no later than 24 months from the date on which the employer filed the patent application.

In addition to the lump-sum payment, the employee receives annual remuneration if the employer obtains a patent.

Annual remuneration is calculated in accordance with Paragraph 2 of the Calculation Procedure and must be paid to the author of the employee-created object within three months after the end of each 12-calendar-month period during which the patent remained in force, with such periods calculated from the date of grant of the patent.

If, before the end of the relevant 12-calendar-month period, the employer loses its exclusive right to the object (for example, by terminating the right early or transferring it to another person under an assignment agreement), the remuneration is calculated in proportion to the number of days elapsed from the end of the preceding 12-month period until the date on which the exclusive right was lost. The remuneration must be paid within two months from the date on which the rights were lost.

The employee receives remuneration calculated as a percentage if the employer:

• grants another person the right to use the object under a license agreement. In this case, the author’s remuneration amounts to 10% of the remuneration received by the employer (licensor) as established by the license agreement;
• transfers to another person, under an agreement, the right to obtain a patent or the exclusive right to the object. In this case, the author’s remuneration amounts to 15% (or 50% if the employer is a research organization or a state or municipal higher education institution) of the remuneration received by the employer under the relevant agreement.

In these cases, the employer must pay the author the remuneration within two months from the date on which the employer receives the remuneration stipulated by the relevant agreement. If the agreement provides for remuneration to the employer in the form of fixed lump-sum or periodic payments, or in another form, the employer must pay the author within two months from the date on which the relevant portion of the remuneration is received.

It should also be noted that, if an employee-created object is created jointly by several authors, the remuneration provided for by the Rules is distributed among the co-authors in proportion to the amount of each author’s creative contribution. For the purposes of calculating remuneration, the creative contributions of the co-authors are deemed to be equal unless the co-authors provide the employer with an agreement specifying the amount or allocation of their respective creative contributions.

The new Rules entered into force on September 1, 2026, and will remain in effect until September 1, 2032.