I just got my 10th patent last week. I wrote it up about a week before being fired from my job a few years ago. The ninth was one I wrote up when I was back on a contract at the same company. They are all assigned to someone else, none of them are really exciting, I’ll never make money off them, but it’s still cool to have 10 patents that my descendants can find on-line some day.
Congratulations! My father-in-law has about the same number of patents, all for industry. But very cool for us and we’ve got them noted in our genealogy.
Congratulations, Dan! That’s quite an accomplishment. You have ten times as many as I do 
What field are they in?
Computer stuff.
Congratulations. You beat me, too.
How’d they wind up assigned to somebody else if you didn’t make any money off of them? Did you just donate the rights?
You WILL here from my lawyers soon. I patented “computer stuff” in 1997 and yet nobody seems to give me wide enough berth to make any money off of it.
Congratulations! I have none, but don’t even try to pursue them.
Very cool - although I have not pursued a patent, it is one of those things I look to as a sign of real accomplishment, like being part of starting or growing a company, or getting a book published or something…
Congratulations.
At ten, don’t you get some patent leather shoes?
You have 10 computer patents? wooooo. Big deal. Anyone can get two patents.
IIRC, it’s standard practice that anything you develop on the company’s time or with the company’s resources is their property. Some places will split a percentage of revenue with the inventor, but most do not. For a fascinating case study, check out the story of Shuji Nakamura, the Japanese academic who invented the blue laser used in Blu-Ray recording. Because he developed it on company time and with company resources, the company felt no additional compensation was due. He eventually sued, and was awarded $180 million, which was later reduced to $9 million.
Congratulations. I only have three.
ETA: And a fourth in the pipeline, though with the current backlog at the patent office, I don’t expect it to be granted for a few more years.
It’s standard practice if they employ you and pay you. All my patents are assigned to the company that paid me to invent things. I wondered how it happened that Dan Blather was never going to get paid anything.
True. You can find that in your company policy manual somewhere, if you ask. It’s common to give the employee a bonus of some kind, though. Cheaper than pissing him off and losing him. The inventors’ names are still on the patent, though. Inventions made under government contracts are assigned to the government, btw.
Only 6 here - I’d better start being smarter.
Indeed. Part of my job is inventing new things that will benefit the company, so obviously all of my patents are assigned to the company. They do reward me by giving me bonuses, praise in my personnel file, etc. There’s a reason I’m a survivor of dozens of rounds of layoffs over the last ten years.
Depending on where the inventor lives, there can be a legal requirement to pay him more than just salary. In Germany, even though they may be paid to work on a patentable invention, inventors get further compensation if the patent is profitable - a certain small percentage of the gross or of the profits, I think. Not so in the USA, tho…
Just chiming in to say COOL!
Are they software patents or real patents? That will determine how impressed I am.
Sorry, I was not clear. I was paid well for my work and got an additional small stipend for each patent. I just meant that I will not seen any royalties since they are “assigned” to the company.
And no, most are not “real” patents, just software patents.