(Asking for legal advice on the Internet. Double oops). There's a point in the application process where you need to affirm, under penalty of perjury, a bunch

(Asking for legal advice on the Internet. Double oops). There's a point in the application process where you need to affirm, under penalty of perjury, a bunch of legal stuff about the invention. I can see having second thoughts about (say) the prior art landscape, or having sincere doubts that the application teaches something patentable, and refusing to sign. If the potential patents are actually valuable, the cheapest way for the company to realize them is to pay the engineer for his time. The company already sounds like a horrible place to work, and lawsuits against current or former employees are going to send an awesome message to the ranks. Engaging in a suit to force someone to patent an invention is going to get really interesting and expensive. It's also possible that the engineer has been gaming the patent reward system, turning in inventions that are just reworked prior art, or that are not actually very valuable (too narrow or obscure to be interesting, or too broad and risky to use in legal action). 30 patents is a lot, relatively speaking -- perhaps the company realized that it was actually getting low-quality inventions and decided to adjust the compensation accordingly.