> I believe this was an honest misunderstanding and not an attempt to steal the idea because if the patent had issued and become valuable, it would have been ea

> I believe this was an honest misunderstanding and not an attempt to steal the idea because if the patent had issued and become valuable, it would have been easily invalidated. "Easily", if you have deep pockets to foot all the legal costs. Big companies know this, hence I don't think it was an innocent misunderstanding. The fact that they wouldn't even add OP as an assignee on the patent just reinforces my view that they were acting in bad faith. OP was lucky to catch this before the patent was issued.