ReferenceDesk (Score 1)

There are a couple of different elements that can influence how well an incentive program works. First, are you compensating for effort, or for perception? If your company actually gets the inventor involved in drafting the patent application, there could be tens of hours of "off the clock" work involved, and thus a significant cash bonus might be in order. If on the other hand the process is "spend an hour being interviewed by the patent lawyer, then sign something," the goal of the incentive is less to compensate for the extra work, and more to promote the idea of inventorship within the company. This ties into the second issue, which is how tightly coupled the timing is between the patent-related work, and the compensation for that work. Issuance of a patent can take years, so that a compensation plan that focuses on a big award at the end may not be much of an incentive to a developer who figures their half-life in any one company is around 18 months. Finally, what's the corporate goal of the incentive program? Putting a bounty on idea submissions may bring a lot of good ideas into the open, but also runs the risk of being "gamed". Focusing on patent applications implies that the company actually plans on paying the legal fees needed to create and file those applications. Are there structures in place to review idea submissions, figure out which are both strategically valuable and likely to survive patent examination, and manage what will be a multi-year process? Also be aware that there's a hidden "gotcha" in these compensation programs -- identifying who to award. Nothing ruins morale more than seeing someone who doesn't deserve kudos being rewarded, while the true innovators are quietly ignored. There's also legal risk, if the actual inventors aren't named on the patent application. Your mileage may vary, but the examples of IP incentive programs I've seen work have combined two elements: a modest cash reward for idea submission, and a larger cash award or stock grant on patent application.