My experiences with patents and new ideas

Today jobs have become such that everything one does has to be different to the standards.Innovate to survive is the motto companies want their employees to
follow. Companies like Apple,Google,IBM have specific contracts with their employees for intellectual properties . Employees get a sizeable sum of money for each patent they file.
I was working in IBM and there was a drive for new ideas and for each file(patent) there was a sum of $1000 paid to the employee and though the money offered got reduced with each new idea,each new idea/patent generated contributed to the appraisal ,a change in designation and a better reputation. This seemed fair enough as the company had to pay a good amount of money for each patent filed with the USA Patent and Trademark office . What if the idea submitted by an employee got used by the company for a product which generates a lot of revenues or by any other company and that company is making huge profits. Now a company like IBM tried to be fair and gives a small share of the loyalty to the employee as there is a rare chance for a idea to get integrated in a product and succeed. But what if the employee has worked on an idea totally outside his work domain and not related to his job at all .Then the employee still has an
opportunity to file the idea directly at the US PTO but the employee has to pay the registration charges by himself and ofcourse the employee would be entitled with the full royalty. I think nowdays with the companies and employees both knowing that innovation being the order of the day, both the parties know clearly about the clauses and the contracts signed related to IP. A company which wants its employees to think freely gives the full freedom to the employees of course keeping in mind the advantages for the company and similarly the employee who knows that he has the ability to develop IP's makes sure he gets the best benefit from his contract. IBM also had separate open source contracts that had to be signed by employees too to make sure that employees dont get inspired by company techniques and write new concepts inspired from company materials. So the employees have to make sure that when they sign the contract it
satisfies their freedom to explore and if it does'nt the individual should only agree for a contract which presses forward mutual benefits and doesnt cause any disadvantage to either of the parties.