Design patent is for the design (simply, a box with 8 sides, a keyring, the style of a lamp, a piece of jewelry)

Utility patent is for the machine, the microbe, the parts that make the engine work, in simple terms. The widget that makes the world go round.

In US patent practice applications are filed in the name of the inventors, and then are (typically) assigned to a company. Most inventors work for a company and part of their contract is to assign the rights to the objects they're paid to invent back to the company. As an employee of WED, Bob Gurr would assign the rights to the invention to the company.

Sole inventors are rarer these days simply due to the sheer cost of filing and prosecuting patent applications, not only in the US but worldwide to protect the right to the invention. It's not small spuds. But, if you're lucky and have a patent application or issued patent someone would like to license, then you can make major moola. Then there are guys like Lemmelson, google Lemmelson, and you will get loads of info, who sued for his VHS system patent. Of course, I'm simplifying, he was a prolific inventor and a gazollionare by the time he died, and his foundation is still going strong. Still suing as far as I know.

Anyway, attorneys can explain far better than I and the ins and outs of the law.

Yup - the inventor has to be a person (or people, for joint ownership) who make an oath of some sort as part of the application. A company doesn't invent. A person can be hired by a company to invent and can own the IP associated with the invention, but the actual inventing was done by people.

I don't really know much about design patents - we never seem to cover that topic. But patents have to be related to something useful, and copyrights don't.

Thanks for the clarification, Pru.