Inventors' Material Rights in Defense Industries (A Comparative Study in China, Russia, the United States and Iran)

The way inventors in defense industries are championed is a more controversial issue in the Law on Intellectual Property. The problem is that on the one hand, as the general rules of intellectual property state,  supporting inventors through granting patents (as a document indicating ownership and the right of exclusive use) involves the disclosure of information concerning inventions, and on the other hand, the country's defense imperatives require having to maintain confidentiality as related to these inventions. For this purpose, the question raised is that of whether the material rights capable of being granted to inventors in defense industry, and totally speaking, the way those inventors are supported should be the same as the way other inventors (i.e. non-defense inventors) are supported. In the present article, we seek to make a comparative study of the material rights capable of being granted to inventors in defense industry in China, Russia, the United States and Iran with library method in an effort to detect and introduce a convenient legal system as for inventors' material rights in defense industries in these countries. Finally, it is concluded that, firstly, due to inevitable limitations that follow from the confidentiality of defense inventions and the Administration's supervision over how these inventions are employed, making a payment as compensation or reward on top of exclusive property right is increasingly logical and closely aligned with defense and economic interests, and secondly, issuing patents in order to support the inventors in defense-related industries is far from colliding with the basics of intellectual property law.