Employee gets royalties from patent

  

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Wow, this Japanese employee is getting some of the royalties from a product that uses a patent he developed ... while working at the company.   Hitachi pays out in patent dispute with employee | Channel Register

A Japanese inventor has won a patent dispute with his employer which will net him 163 million yen (£733,000) in compensation for his research on optical disks.

If employees were to start getting royalty payments as a result of successful work they do, they might be much more motivated to do really good work, but companies might have to rethink their compensation and business plans.  For example, can they afford to invest as much in research if part of the profits have to go to all the employees that work on it?   Do they need to pay people as much if they are essencially offering a very large bonus if the project is successful because of the employee's innovations?

Bad or good, this would definitely change the way companies do business.