Patents and patent applications are personal property. Applications for patent, patents, or any interest therein, are assignable in law by an instrument in writing. Assignment means a transfer by a party of all or part of its right, title and interest in a patent, patent application, registered mark or a mark for which an application to register has been filed. “Assignment,” in general, is the act of transferring to another the ownership of one’s property, i.e., the interest and rights to the property.

A legal way for an inventor to transfer ownership of a patent or a pending patent application to another individual or a business is called a patent assignment. In the United States, only a person or a group of persons can be listed as the inventor(s) of a patent or a pending patent application. The ownership of a patent or a pending application can be assigned to a business by an inventor or a group of inventors in form of assignment via the Assignment Division of the USPTO.

Technically, the “assignor(s)” transfers their patent rights to the “assignee(s)” so the assignor in a first assignment will be the inventor and the assignee will be another individual or a business who will take the ownership after the assignment is recorded with the Assignment Division of the USPTO.

An assignment of a patent, or patent application, is the transfer to another of a party’s entire ownership interest or a percentage of that party’s ownership interest in the patent or application. In order for an assignment to take place, the transfer to another must include the entirety of the bundle of rights that is associated with the ownership interest, i.e., all of the bundle of rights that are inherent in the right, title and interest in the patent or patent application.