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Wait, so the engineer came up with an idea in their spare time, demo'd it to the bosses then decided that it wasn't worth it to follow up on the idea in their s
by UncleEntity 8y ago
Wait, so the engineer came up with an idea in their spare time, demo'd it to the bosses then decided that it wasn't worth it to follow up on the idea in their spare time but now they want to somehow force them to turn it over after apparently deleting all evidence of it?
I don't actually know what to think about this (and I'm a big fan of absurdity) but suspect there's some hidden moral to this story...
- dboreham 8y agoThere's a whole legal theory behind what's discussed in the OP : patent rights get assigned to employer by employee under terms of their employment agreement, subject to whatever laws pertain under the relevant jurisdiction (e.g. California is probably different). The $1000 bonus thing has a legal purpose to beef up the employer's rights to the IP, since under law the rights accrue to the inventor not the employer. And on and on. So this manager is a clueless idiot who needs some schooling in the law and the various risks he is running in taking the action he's taken. Ianal, but...seriously..if you're an engineering manager you should know this stuff to some level.
- notyourday 8y agoWould a $0.01 bonus be sufficient to beef up employer's right to the IP?