I don't care about terminology/title. That's irrelevant. My point is that the company raised 77 million of dollars based entirely on technology invented by this

I don't care about terminology/title. That's irrelevant. My point is that the company raised 77 million of dollars based entirely on technology invented by this developer. Him asking to own a small part of that is totally reasonable. I agree that he should have signed a proper contract with them and not rely on verbal agreements (but after reading little bit about him online he seems to be some sort of extreme libertarian, he doesn't believe in lawyers and contracts, just in voluntary exchanges). But that doesn't mean it's not a bit evil for the company to just throw him away after using his name and technology to get people invest in them.