Are patent agents ghostwriters?

As soon as any person begins to pen his / her thoughts, it is my understanding that he derives from a compendium of things, gathered by virtue of his academic, personal, professional experience, and corroborates them at a sub-conscious level by the prowess of his / her imaginative fuel to churn out a written package. It can, therefore, be a definite possibility that the human under question can eventually enter the same cycle of thoughts and run out of ideas to pen a certain subject matter in a variety of ways.

The trail of thoughts that ensues while drafting a patent application may be borrowed from a variety of sources namely, reference material, online content, offline content, actual working knowledge or even self-driven experiences of the applicant / inventor or of the agent drafting the application.

A Ghostwriter is a person who writes ‘on behalf’ of another person, with a contractual understanding in place that the ghostwriter continues to remain the bodiless entity and credit for all copyright in respect of the ghostwritten article subsists with the other person, which other person is the front face. The legality of such an ‘understanding’ may be questionable on certain accounts, such questionable accounts being an author whom the world believes to write books, but in fact, gets it ghostwritten. Many well-known persons pay ghostwriters, for articulating their verbose dealings in writing. These may include celebrities or politicians who maintain blogs, but of course, do not have the time an inclination to actually pen their own thoughts, but feel the need to do so for sake of personal relationship with his / her followers. But, illegal cases arise, wherein a consumer pays to read ‘claimed original’ stuff from an author, but is hoodwinked by the fact that the author actually hires a ghostwriter to write. In such cases, the clarity of copyright subsistence is questionable, and of course bought off by the power of money.

Ghostwriter – copyright issue!:
The question further escalates to the “patent agent – ghostwriter issue”.

For all practical purposes, a patent agent dealing with original drafting of patent applications serves as a Ghostwriter for his / her client. Every patent application, inherently, subsists with a copyright, which is the client’s copyright. In the instance, then that a patent agent borrows, voluntarily or involuntarily, one of his or her own drafts, or portions thereof, to outline a same trail of thoughts in two different drafts of two different client, the subsequence of copyright overlapping are far more implicative!

Ghostwriter – copyright issue Remedy:
The only remedy in such cases is due-diligence on part of the agent and proactiveness on part of the client, to steer away from already written matter or already published matter. A client should justify his proactiveness by providing a write-up so that the seed of the thought process remains true to the client. Active indulgence between the client and the agent is also a way to warrant such remedies.