I worked at a large U.S. information company that gave $500 per author for filing a patent application. Once a year, you could submit your patent application fo

I worked at a large U.S. information company that gave $500 per author for filing a patent application. Once a year, you could submit your patent application for the "Inventor of the Year" award. Given the 60k employees worldwide, it carried some weight, was awarded by the global CTO of the corporation, and the cash prize was $10k. Yet the true main benefit is the line item in your resume, I suppose. I don't know if giving $500 pre-tax is a good idea, because it is so little after taxes. On the other hand, the annual $10k amount is more appropriate unless shrunk by sharing with co-inventors. In contrast, German law has a clause that inventors must be given a share of the profit generated by patents. You cannot sign to opt out of this clause, and the profit must be proportional to your invention's part of the product or service generating said profit. This is interesting in that only value-generating, granted patents are rewarded, not applications. But it's hard to find a fair reward formula for detemining how much a particular patent contributes to a product's profit or revenue stream (if it's not Amazon's "1-Click" button...).