Author's Certificate

a document that establishes the right to an invention.

In the USSR this document confirms the author’s claim to authorship and his right to a reward and other rights and benefits, and the government’s exclusive right to use the invention. In issuing an author’s certificate, the state assumes the task of implementing the invention and of deciding whether its introduction is advisable. All socialist organizations may, without special permission, utilize an invention for which an author’s certificate has been issued. An author’s certificate may be issued to a Soviet citizen as well as to a citizen of another state. In general, the author can choose between an author’s certificate and a patent. However, author’s certificates are issued only for certain inventions; these are inventions that are especially important for the supply of food products and for the protection of the health of the population, as well as all inventions made while the author was working for a socialist organization, upon its assignment, or with its material help.

Applications for an author’s certificate are filed with the Committee for Inventions and Discoveries under the USSR Council of Ministers. The Committee conducts an expert’s examination and establishes whether an invention has actually been made. Socialist organizations are obliged to declare inventions made in the USSR by their employees in fulfillment of their duties and file applications for them indicating the name of the author or authors. In this case, the author’s certificate is issued to the author and to the organization that has declared the invention; but all the rights conferred by the author’s certificate are the author’s alone. If the authorship cannot be ascertained, an organization may obtain an author’s certificate in its name, thus acting as author. Author’s certificates were first introduced in 1919, and the present form of protecting inventions was established in 1931.

Most other socialist countries have a similar method of protecting inventions, but the corresponding document is not always called an author’s certificate. Bulgaria, the Mongolian People’s Republic, Poland, and Rumania issue author’s certificates; but in Poland and Rumania the author’s certificate establishes only the inventor’s title and not the right to use the invention. In some socialist countries documents corresponding to the author’s certificate have a different name: in Czechoslovakia it is called “patent with an asterisk” (to distinguish it from an ordinary patent), and in the German Democratic Republic it is called “economic patent.” In Algeria inventions are protected by similar author’s certificates that differ slightly in content.