Conception is the touchstone of invention
Scientific research is very much a team effort, usually involving collaborations between researchers at different institutions and, quite often, movement of collaborators between laboratories. But this can create problems when deciding whom to credit for specific work — be it on journal papers or patents. In a dispute between academic researchers over who should be named as patent inventors, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that this should be awarded only to the scientists who conceived the idea of the invention.
via nature.com
