Short answer. Yes. Article 721 of the Civil Code says a scientist or technologist, or any other person, acquires ownership by intellectual creation with regard to his discovery or invention. Ownership arises from the act of creating the discovery or invention itself, alongside the same rule for authors, composers, and artists.
What the law says
By intellectual creation, the following persons acquire ownership
Civil Code, Article 721 — Ownership By Intellectual Creation. Read the full provision →
What the law says
The scientist or technologist or any other person with regard to his discovery or invention.
Civil Code, Article 721 — Ownership By Intellectual Creation. Read the full provision →
Why intellectual creation is treated as its own basis for ownership
Property law usually thinks about ownership in terms of things that already exist — buying land, inheriting a house, taking possession of an abandoned object. A discovery or invention does not fit that model cleanly, because before the scientist made it, there was nothing there to own. Article 721 addresses that gap by recognizing the act of intellectual creation itself as a distinct way ownership comes into being, alongside the more familiar modes of acquiring property.
Ownership by intellectual creation, as a category
Article 721 recognizes a distinct way of acquiring ownership, separate from buying, inheriting, or occupying property. By intellectual creation, the following persons acquire ownership. The article then lists specific categories of intellectual work, and ownership attaches to the person responsible for creating each kind of work it names, rather than to whoever might later take possession of the resulting output.
The scientist or inventor's place in that list
Alongside authors, composers, painters, sculptors, and other artists, Article 721 names the category your question is about: The scientist or technologist or any other person with regard to his discovery or invention. A scientist or inventor acquires ownership of the discovery or invention by having created it, in the same way an author owns a literary work by having written it.
Why 'by intellectual creation' means ownership arises automatically
The article frames this as ownership acquired by intellectual creation itself — the act of discovering or inventing is what generates the ownership, not a separate registration, filing, or transaction after the fact. That places the scientist or inventor's ownership on the same footing as an author's ownership of a manuscript the moment it is written, or a composer's ownership of a musical composition the moment it is composed.
What this article covers, and what it leaves open
Article 721 establishes that ownership by intellectual creation exists for a discovery or invention; it does not by itself describe how that ownership might later be recorded, licensed, or enforced against others, or how it interacts with other laws that govern specific kinds of intellectual property. Those are separate questions from the basic rule this article states about who acquires ownership in the first place — a rule that applies broadly, since the article extends to any other person making a discovery or invention, not only scientists by profession.