[lucozade]

> the company would have to hire back the original inventors to defend them in court

What makes you say that? I'm genuinely curious. I'm the named inventor on a few of patents for a previous employer that were all granted after I left. It never occurred to me that they would continue to need my services (nor have they).

BTW have you asked your previous employer about the situation? My guess is that @smoyer's situation is fairly rare and the company will likely consider it a perk rather than an entitlement. It's not clear there would be any harm in asking though.

[wsr]

I have friends who have gone through this experience. I was pretty surprised too that the company was willing to pay so much to defend their patents. Granted... my friend's rate was fairly reasonable... I think between $500-$1000/hour in probably the early 2000s.

It really depends on the patent in the end of the day. If a company can potentially lose tens or hundreds of millions over a lost lawsuit, spending a million on legal defense would be very reasonable.

I have not talked to my employer about this. I wanted to get some collective wisdom from the HN community before approaching them. But yeah, I'll definitely give it a shot. It doesn't hurt to ask.