Who owns IP created in a pilot or joint development project?

By default, whoever invented it, which in a joint project is often both parties jointly, and joint ownership without an agreement is the worst outcome for everyone. Joint development agreements therefore split IP into three categories. Background IP is what each party brings in, and stays with that party; it is normally listed in a schedule and licensed to the other side only for the project. Foreground IP is what the project creates; the agreement decides who owns it, typically the party whose background it improves, or the party that will commercialise it, with the other receiving a licence. Sideground IP, less often defined, is what a party develops during the project period independently of it, and stays with that party. Patents follow inventorship, not funding: paying for the project does not make a customer an inventor, and an engineer who contributed to a claim is an inventor whichever company pays them.

Where the agreement is silent, the default rules bite. In the United States, joint owners of a patent can each make, use and license it without the other's consent or any duty to share revenue (35 U.S.C. 262), so a customer co-owning your core patent could license it to your competitor. In the UK, under section 36 of the Patents Act 1977, a co-owner can work the invention but needs the others' consent to license or assign, which produces deadlock instead. Either way, a joint patent is hard to enforce and hard to sell. The practical rules: file your own applications on your background before the project starts, so it is identifiable; agree in writing who owns foreground and who gets what licence; require both parties' staff to have assignment agreements with their employers; and keep an invention record during the project so inventorship can be established when it comes to filing. Lightbringer's disclosure workflow produces that record as a by-product of drafting.