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My workplace paid for my Microsoft Build ticket.
At Build, they gave every person an HP laptop as a give away.
Is this generally considered my laptop, or my employers laptop?
Edit from the comments
I have had the laptop for a long time, my employer knew about it. Almost exclusively used for personal use, but sometimes when I had to go into a clients office since I had no other laptop. They are now asking for it back and I'm not sure if I would be in the wrong to claim it's mine.
Ask your manager. They'll probably agree it's yours (my hunch).
I do think they should understand you want it, in case their policy is ambiguous. They'll see it as a cheap way to increase your satisfaction with the job. You should not need to be confrontational or belligerent to communicate this.
I really hope your relationship with your company is not so terrible that you can't have a straightforward conversation about this ambiguous situation and get an honest answer.
I saw this same scenario play out, once, at an old job. It was a videotape storage rack, "won" by an attendee who was my boss at the time, and a video engineer at a post production house (as was I).
It was a relatively inexpensive item, but the owner and the "winner" fought back-and-forth so childishly over the thing that it hardly seemed worth it. In the end, it left a lot of resentment between the two, and I believe was no small part in the engineer leaving the company.
In my opinion, the laptop belongs to your employer, because as AndreROIM said, it was a material part of the package your company purchased for you to attend.
My recommendation: Tell your employer it would really help you to work occasionally from home if you could have it.
Be honest, be prompt in being honest, and ask. It may be an easy pitch to your employer. The paperwork and hassle to integrate a non-standard system into the network through IT may be more headache than the laptop is worth to them.
---Updated In Light Of Recent Comments---
Generally speaking it will depend on your company's policies. Not so generally speaking, however, if a manager walks up to you and claims that the laptop belongs to the company then you have to decide whether hanging on to it is worth your job or not.
Conference swag is, in my experience, each participant's to keep. I've never heard of the company demanding that their employees hand over their t-shirts, pens, or other such trinkets. That being said, a laptop is worth quite a bit more than a t-shirt.
On the Wikipedia page it lists every such convention that has taken place, and it mentions that in 2015:
Some managers may feel that since the company paid for the (pricey) ticket they are entitled to the "gift" - let's be serious, it was not so much a gift as a part of the package. This may especially be true if it's a smaller company and the price of a laptop is actually a significant expense to them.
Seeing how they've known about this machine yet allowed you to keep it for personal use makes the situation confusing. Had they immediately established that it was a work machine, that would have been fine (and I highly encourage anyone in a similar situation to hash this out with their employer as soon as they receive such a generous gift).
However, a year of personal use later I can see how you'd be upset at parting with it.
At the end of the say the most you can do is state your case:
With respect, I received this laptop as part of my convention gift package, and have been using it as a personal machine for almost a year. It's a little late in the game for you to claim it as a company resource.
That may (most likely will) not go over well. At that point you could simply quit and keep the laptop and they probably won't take legal action against you. Probably.
