3 Answers

Our laws recognize employers as the owners of the work of  their employees. If you produce or invent anything while in the employment of another it can be legally argued that what you did belongs to the business. When you work for someone ( person, company, corporation etc.) your inventions are owned by your employer.  For 5 years after having been employed there or as a result of training your invention is theirs. Universities have similar entitlements. Our congress has made every citizen of the USA a slave to industry with no rights as a result of the preferential treatment given business in our courts. When my invention of an electronic gadget brought a nomination for the Nobel Prize in physics I recognized a flaw in the process. The patent application requires the inventors name. Since others in the company put their name there instead of mine, I appealed to the US Patent office to recognize their practice as theft since prizes  and gratuities from sources outside of the corporation did not belong to the corporation but, in this case, to me. When the patent office recognized the practice as theft, the USPTO recognized the history of the practice and withdrew 7000 patents from AT&T resulting in the break-up of the monopoly. The laws have changed and the Nobel Prize people are very careful about awarding the actual inventors. Perhaps you have noticed how few prizes are awarded in the US any more. The practice of legally stealing ideas from the little guy assures Corporate America that your talent will not set you free from their chains…we are not free, we are employed.

If it is your invention can you prove that you invented it? 

If you can prove that you invented it, was the thief your employer?

Were you paid to work on something that resulted in your inventions development?

Yes,no,no.  The only answers that can keep your case alive. 

depends on whare you live in most jurisdictions in the USA it is usually one year.if you have a patent for the invention that pre-dates this you will have more time