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Employee Patent Compensations?
Anonymous Coward asks: "My employer has recently filed a patent application for something I invented. As compensation I am being given the statutory $1 for the assignment and a shiny brass plaque if the patent(s) is awarded. Is this typical for North American companies? I did sign a no compensation and automatic assignment type employment contract and while I was willing to accept that technically, I'm owed nothing, this strikes me as cheap, greedy, and backward thinking on my employers part. I've Google'd and read and this action seems archaic, am I wrong and just full of myself? Your thoughts please!"
...if the patent proves valuable, and they don't feel the need to compensate you directly, you should be viewed as an exceptionally good catch for some other company.
"My employer has recently filed a patent application for something I invented."
And yet you still left out something very important - you invented it on company time (or even used a little bit of company time) and you've been on the payroll since before concieved of the invention, and , in fact, you were employed in order to benefit the company - including anything you invent while working for the company.
You have been paid for, are being paid for, and will likely continue to be paid for the invention - it's called a salary or paycheck.
I'm sorry if you didn't understand the terms of your employment.
Besides, you can get the answer to your question from Google, which will show you that it's a fairly commonly asked question
As far as what is typical in the industry - typically the inventor gets nothing but name recognition. If the invention makes the company a million, they tend to treat you better, but it still shows as zip on your paycheck (except your raises may be slightly higher than usual for awhile)
You might be able to work something out if you are a contractor and can show that you developed the invention for general use in your contracting business, and not for this specific client, but then you get to be the cost bearer of obtaining the patent, and likely (as with the vast majority of inventions) you will never recoup those costs.
It's better to put the invention down on your resume, and work it from the angle of, "I can do good things for your company" rather than trying to say with your current employer, "Hey, where's my piece of the pie?". Likely your piece of the pie will be somewhere outside the office very shortly thereafter.
-Adam
That's corporate life in the 21st century (and has been for a while). Loyalty is an outdated idea. Companies are showing less and less loyalty to employees, and employees are returning the favor.
As far as I'm concerned, the difference between being a full-time employee and a contractor boils down to compensation. Salaried employees trade a higher hourly rate for a fixed salary and additional non-monetary but quanitifiable benefits. Also, the government treats you differently for tax purposes. Period.
Anything else is above and beyond the call. The company will most likely lay the employee off in a heartbeat if they feel the need, and the employee will jump ship at a moment's notice for better pay or a more interesting job. Companies have forgotten how much more valuable a properly-trained and experienced senior employee can be, and employees have forgotten the less tangible benefits of staying with a firm for an extended period of time.
Like almost everyone else in modern American business, no real attention is being paid to the long-term. Only short-term gains are considered. An employee will bail for a 10% increase in pay, while a company will treat people like a commodity and swap them around and dump them for the slightest reason.
Unfortunately, in this climate, intangibles don't count for much, because you can't depend on loyalty being rewarded with loyalty. The companies are to blame when the concept of downsizing and commoditization of employees because more important than treating people like people. Now the shoe's on the other foot and employees aren't giving loyalty either, because they don't expect they will get it.
Unfortunately, the culture now is very much a mercenary culture, and it is stuck in a vicious circle being fed by things like frequent job changes, outsource overseas, the increasing reliance on temp workers, etc.
So, while the company doesn't _owe_ you anything more than a handshake and maybe a plaque (in addition to your salary), if they are wise, they will cultivate your obvious value, and you, in turn, should reciprocate, building a stronger and more valuable relationship.
In my case, I have at times, not shown as much loyalty as I maybe should have, because I am not a patient person, and am unwilling to suffer through a project of a year or more on the chance that the next one will be something I actually want to do. By the same token, I have been lied to, indirectly at least, and treated very unfairly on more than one occasion. The biggest problem I have had, as a long time (15+ years) expert developer that does not want to go into management, is being put in a situation more appropriate for a junior-level programmer, where I cannot utilize my expertise in a way that provides interest to me nor maximizes the company's benefit of my long years of experience. In my current job, I have literally been told nmy work is too good. If every piece of what I develop is not understandable by every programmer (at a shop that is light-weight on progammer talent), then it shouldn't be done that way. Given the impressive resume that I provide, wiuth its emphasis on improving the status quo, and developing sophisticated tools and solutions, it seems rather dishonest to state that I am a good match for the position, because after almost 6 months, I know I clearly am not. If and when I find alternative work, I will take it immediately, despite the fact that I hate to leave after such a short time, and yet, if the culture of the company (for which software development is of peripheral importance, as evidenced by the quotes "We are a bunch of hacks. This is a garage shop." They do brute-force, copy-and-paste work which would have looked archaic 10 years ago) had been described to me honestly, I would have realized it was a bad match up front. One thing I can be honest about is that I get bored easily and I am neither happy or productive when I am bored. I don't think it's fair to hire someone with 10+ years of C++ experience as a C++ p
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
IBM would give you $1500 for the first. Then they start dolling out stock and stock options for subsequent ones. If you score 3 you're all but made a senior; making senior can take 20 years at IBM, it's a big thing, if you chalk up a nice set of patents then you get a promo a year until you're senior, typically.
At 5 they have a club. They give you a folder and you're a member of the super elite club. I don't recall them ever having meetings or anything like that. I think the best part is the chairman probably has read your name on a sheet of paper at that point. The folder I was given for the club was sub standard, they pretty much had photocopies of the actual patent description forms.
Beyond that I think it starts getting even more lame, less and less money per patent. By that point you've probably established a pretty firm footing within the company whatever you're goals there maybe. You could be an executive in the management path or you can be as senior as anyone there on the technical path. It's kind of easy by that point too, you see in IBM half the battle is dealing with the lawyers and following up on everything and filling out all of the paperwork. By the time you make 5 you can pretty much stamp them out, at some point along the ways legal takes you a bit more seriously too, the first is hard but once you get that they assume (rightly or wrongly) that you're more likely to get another so they are willing to do the search.
Now I know of a very letitigious mid sized company that routinely involves itself in lawsuits regarding patents. (They sell TV) They encourage patents by rewarding their corporate IP lawyer with money and vacations (a particulaly swarthy guy) and they give the engineers in question a pat on the back at a team meeting and a plaque. It created a very entertaining encounter once where he was trying to mine patents from me which I refused to explain until he anted up something. The bastard didn't seem to understand that I wanted some money or something, like he would get, for the idea. He just didn't get it. He would make quarterly rounds asking people for ideas and such, going office to office. We had that exchange twice before he understood.
Honestly, I love Linux and opensource. I'm not in favor of some patents but I don't really mind them that much. The holder is well within their rights to make patents implementable in GPLed code. I also completely respect IP and the patent process, in spirit. If my company doesn't pay me for it, I'm not helping them get a patent, very simply. I'm not sure what's fair but in today's world if a company doesn't believe in patents they will eventually run in to trouble and if they want to avoid that they should reward their employees for it. I wouldn't accept less than $1000; I also wouldn't take options instead of cash, straight stock is okay but nothing that is worthless.