How is a US patent linked to the non-us person's identity?

Question

I was wondering, how is a patent linked to the owning people who reside outside US? It cannot be only assigned by name of course. There might be thousands of people by the same name.

Is it linked to, for instance, the passport ID of the person? Of course it can also change later by changing the passport, or maybe to national ID number of the person in their homeland? Which I don't think also.

I mean if I register a US patent, how can the law recognize me as the credible person among the other people with the same name as me?

Answer 1

Regardless of location of the inventor the person’s name and city of residence are all that is listed in the form. Same form for everybody. By international treaty every patent office needs to treat inventors and applicants identically regardless of nationality. Might be different if the invention relates to atom bombs. There is an issue about accessing unpublished applications from outside the US if the invention was made in the US, independent of the nationality of the Inventor.

Answer 2

Funny question. But you're paying fees and all, if it really came down to someone else with the same name trying to steal your patent, I do think you'd be able to prove that it's yours by following the money.

Other than that, name and adress. However, as long as nobody complains, the patent office won't extensively check for fraud.

If you sue someone from the patent and there is reasonable doubt it's even yours, you'd have the burden of prove.

So basically, the answer is: it's not linked to you perfectly, but I have never heard of problems with that.