One.
Nobody "builds the world's first uP w/ on-chip ROM...." by themselves.
True that. I did the final design rule check on the layout, and I did all the lithography and etching on the first lot. (Interesting sidebar, I did the DRC in a vacuum, just me, the rules, and a printout with no other info. It really bothered my boss that I told him how many people did the layout, and which areas were done by each, just from the stylistic variations.)
I parleyed one of my patents into a job where I earned over half a million. Other than that, yeah, most of my patents were developed on company time with company resources and company colleagues.
Since I mostly deal with the actual wafer processing most of my improvements remained trade secrets. You know why, don't you?
I also had a former company patent one of my ideas without naming me as the inventor. Too bad they folded before I could sue them *sigh*.
So, enlighten me as to IP agreements...
I've wasted lots of time learning the legal side of patents....orders of magnitude more than the "simple" side: the inventing! =)
In process, gaining many of the same black eyes and broken ribs everyone else has gotten from the IP monster.
For that particular case, you do not have to sue. If it was granted, or is still under review, you can file with the USPTO and have the thing invalidated....won't cost you a dime! Even if the company went under, perhaps some creditor assumed the rights? If it's an orphan, and nobody's pursuing it, you could go and file a provisional patent on your own and lay claim to it from scratch, or some novel twist on it in hindsight. If it was rejected, you won't get very far. But if it just died on the review vine from going out of business or neglect, you can probably resurrect the idea.
It's funny how if you had released the idea anonymously on FR, for example, to where it was out in the public domain, you could also terminate their lingering rights to it and while technically fraud, it's actually a just outcome and you could manufacture and sell the thingy free and clear (but so could others of course).
I don't think there was any need for us to get cross wise on this thread, and I apologize for reacting. But these content free technical articles using Carl Levin and John Frakkin MCpain as the technical experts burn me up.