I suspect the answer to your question is yes, if the product is big and important enough. For example, Paul Buchheit is the founder of Gmail. Sure he was an emp

I suspect the answer to your question is yes, if the product is big and important enough. For example, Paul Buchheit is the founder of Gmail. Sure he was an employee at Google at the time, but all things considered, Gmail would not exist today if it wasn't for Paul. When you service billions of users, the lines get blurry.