Two researchers have been awarded £1.5m under a little-used section of patent law which allows employees extra compensation for inventions which are of "outstanding benefit" to employers.

Companies which hire employees to invent things for them generally retain the patents and other intellectual property for those inventions. By owning those rights the companies in turn control the earnings that result from the inventions.

But a clause of the Patents Act allows for extra payments to be made in exceptional circumstances. The High Court has just made the first public award of such a payment to two scientists from Amersham International, now a subsidiary of GE Healthcare.

Duncan Kelly and Kwok Wai Chiu invented a cardiac imaging product which the High Court found had earned £50m for Aversham. In fact the Court said that the benefit was "very much greater" than that figure, but chose £50m as "the absolute rock bottom figure" for the patents' benefit.

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