[_delirium]

The reason for that is that under the prevailing caselaw, companies can't be "inventors" of things, and therefore they don't fit under the clause of the U.S. Constitution that authorizes patents, which specifically mentions securing exclusive rights to an invention to its "inventor". Hence the legal dance where the inventors (specific humans who invented something) are named in the patent, but then they assign their exclusive right to the invention to another legal entity (their employer).

I think that might be a bit of a historical anomaly, though, related to when different doctrines were developed. Nowadays legal personhood is personhood-enough for most areas of law. One could imagine a court in 2014, looking at this issue for the first time, deciding that when a company puts a bunch of R&D money into something, and an invention results, through the actions of perhaps dozens of people working within the company's structures and facilities, it is in effect the company as an aggregate entity that has invented the invention. That might even fit a bit better (though still imperfectly) with modern scientific/historical understanding of invention, which generally views single-person "eureka!" moments as the exception, and collaborative efforts where some R&D "system" can be reasonably credited with the invention as the norm.

But this particular body of law was settled back in the days when the prevailing legal fiction around corporations was a bit different, so only humans can legally invent things. Due to the common dance around assignment, it doesn't make much practical difference anyway.