On Fri, 8 Jan 2016 16:46:36 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


I've was involved in giving deposition in a lawsuit for something like
this although it didn't involve anything disclosed during an interview
for a job. A company can legally claim rights to anything designed or
developed by an employee while they are employed by the company and if
the subject item is part of the company's business area or products.

If an employee developed something *before* they became employed, he
retains the rights to it (if patented) or it becomes a negotiated
issue. "Prior knowledge" or something like that. Usually something
developed that becomes patented lists the individual employee or
employees responsible for it's design as the "inventor" but the rights
to it are assigned to the company.

It was a while ago though and I've forgotten all the details.

A lot depends on what is in your employment contract. IBM was pretty
draconian on this. If I invented a better toilet plunger when I worked
for them, IBM still would have owned the rights to it.
The only way around that was to get a prior waiver and that probably
would have come with the "suggestion" that you seek your fortune
elsewhere. They really wanted you inventing for them.

I do think the biggest thing Edison invented was the intellectual
property agreement. That allowed him to set up 2 invention factories.,
There is the one everyone knows about in Menlo Park but he also had a
similar operation in Ft Myers
The bamboo in my back yard is from Edison's light bulb experiments.
He contracted the Koreshans to grow many strains of bamboo because
that was one of his ideas for a filament. It is everywhere around here
now. Fortunately these are not the invasive strains that take over the
countryside.