I worked for an industrial research lab, where there were only me and a manager in the project. It has been several months since I left, but I still have a couple of unfinished patent applications with them.
These patents are actually prepared by a law firm, who caused this delay. In the past, it often took 3 or 4 full working days, spreading over one or two weeks, to finish an application: the lawyer sent the draft, I gave feedback, they modified and sent again and so on.
Problem: now I'm working for a different company, and it's too stressful for me to do this review. I have a long commute by train that I need to leave home at 7:30 AM. I also have small kids, this alone already makes me very stress. I only have some free time after 9:30 PM, after my kids are in beds. But then, I just feel totally exhausted, and I find it very difficult to focus on anything.
My goal: I don't want to do this reviewing any more, but I still want to be listed as an inventor. If this sounds unreasonable, please note that these patents belong to the company and I have no right at all over them (I had to sign such a contract on my start day). So they should take more responsibility to finish those applications.
Back to my former manager, he was a more experienced researcher, with more research papers, patents, and even a book. However, he had not proposed any idea since I joined. The way he managed me was that every month, he would send me an email asking what I had been doing, often without any feedback. Then he would leave me alone until the next month to send that email again. We only talked 2 or 3 times a month, usually when I needed something.
Since I was working on the project that he won the grant, he was automatically a co-inventor in all my patents. However, he had never done any reviewing. He would wait until I finished my iterations of feedback, and then confirmed that everything was OK. Now, I would like to do exactly the same for the unfinished applications.
Current situation: the lawyer from the law firm sent the draft application last year, but they didn't realize that my email didn't work (as I already left). At that time, that former manager hadn't replied to him for a month (from the history of the forwarded email). At the beginning of January, someone from my former employer managed to trace me, and I replied that I would give feedback as soon as I could. On the same day, that manager also replied that he would send a feedback, and I thought that he might have just been back from a long vacation. However, it has been several weeks, and the lawyer already sent the reminder again, but neither the manager nor me bother to reply. It seems like he and I are playing a waiting game that who has more patience will win.
Question: how to tell this manager to do the reviewing instead of relying on me? That's the company's property, and he, as a currently employee, needs to have more responsibility with it.
