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Hello Rosie:
Nothing is wrong with that.. It has to be negotiated BEFORE the item is invented, though. You can't go back and make a contract that wasn't there.
excon
It won't work because the company paid for all the engineering design and everything else to bring the product to the market place etc. The person gets credit for the patent.
The company owns it because you sold it to them.
i dont think theres anything wrong with that
But you can make a contract at point of hire can't you? I don't think it's fair that outsiders can own the intellectual property of others FOREVER. 
. Yes. They pay your wages while you work for them but to own your inventiveness forever seems quite unfair to me. I think it ought to be a standard contract. Just my opinion excon. Thank you for your reply and Happy Sunday.
FOREVER? That is indentured servitude to me m2c. They made money off it while you are employed . Maybe huge amounts. Why should they keep making money off it to infinity and beyond? Thank you for your reply and Happy Sunday! :)
Me too pearl. Thank you for your repy m'dear! :)
I was an engineer once. I designed part of the Dolby digital stereo system to put VH1 on the air. It took me a little over six months to get it working. Then the salesman sold twelve million dollars worth. That supported the entire company for two years while we cooked up another product. I could not have done any part of that project without the company's support.
Ideas are like butts: everybody has one and most of them stink. An idea is worthless until you sell it. The world does not need inventors, it needs peddlers.
Few people really know how or why the industrial revolution happened. Most assume that it happened because James Watt invented a steam engine. That is a typical assumption, considering that we Americans are mostly interested in our gadgets. The steam engine has been reinvented and forgotten several times in the last 2,000 years. The first known inventor was an Egyptian named Hero or Heron, and he could not think of any use for it other than to open the doors to a shrine.
The inventions that are unique to the modern period are:
* mass production, invented by Sam Colt to make pistols
* gonzo marketing, of which Diamond Jim Brady is the most famous example
* consumer financing, invented by Isaac Singer to sell sewing machines
* the savings bank, invented by Noah Webster
Prior to Mr. Webster, the dictionary guy, usury was condemned by almost everybody. Mr. Webster reasoned that it was ok for a man to own part of a business and to receive a portion of the profits, so it must be equally ok to deposit money with a steward who had a talent for investing in successful businesses. The depositor would not actually own a business, but he would have an interest in his steward's dealings and was entitled to be paid for his interest. Prior to that there was no such thing as retirement. People saved what they could of their earnings, or they hoped their children could support them, or they worked until they dropped. The savings bank was an obvious winner, and millions of people deposited their savings to get the benefit of compound interest, thereby providing huge amounts of investment money for new industries such as the recently reinvented steam engine.
