A group of twenty-two inventors and development engineers at Uravagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation haven’t been receiving any pay for their work since 2009, Genesis Law Office’s press release states.

In 2008, the authors of a new invention, a useful make of a tank wagon’s boiler body, signed an agreement with Uralvagonzavod that ensured their remuneration. Under this agreement, payments had to be made every time the useful modification was actually used, every time the make was used in the plant’s production process, and every time the patent was sold or assigned. The agreement also stated that the payments had to be made every quarter.

‘However, starting from the year 2009, remuneration of any kind for inventor activity virtually stopped or became sporadic. This is still the case at the moment. As a result, Uralvagonzavod came to owe increasingly more money to inventors over the three years, so the debt now amounts to several million rubles. For one, the plant owes one of the patent authors about 2m RUR (for the year 2010) and over 500,000 RUR (for the year 2011). The other inventors are owed over a million RUR each. The plant representatives explain this has to do with ‘temporary financial troubles,’ the company reports.