idiot behind a computer screen wrote:
My understanding is that, while the company owns the patent (i.e., most companies require you to sign a contract specifying that you waive your ownership rights over anything invented by you during the course of your employment), they typically list the original inventor(s) on the patent as doing so does not in any way jeopardize their holding over the invention.
First, this is true. They are listed as the owners, and hold all legal and equitable rights over the invention (you assigned any rights as an inventor over to them by way of your employment).
Second, the lack of a signed assignment is not too relevant so long as you were employed to design the product and used their resources to do so. They own it.
Third, and most importantly, if you truly are the inventor, then you MUST be listed as such. However, many people work on products but are not inventors. If your work contributed to the CLAIMS in the patent [last thing in the patent], then you are an inventor. You need not have contributed to all claims, but at least one.
So, if you look at the claims in the patent application, and you can say "yeah I did that" then you are an inventor. However, if you worked on anything that was not included in the claims, then you are not. Even if you did 100% of the industrial design, modeled every manufacturing process on your own, or added lots of nifty features, it is irrelevant if those tasks did not create new art under the claims.
Hope this helps.