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He also tried desperately to get HP to make it an official HP product. HP wasn't interested.

https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2013/01/w...

Still, it was generous of HP not to sue him afterwards. It sounds like he was using company resources to build it, they would have had a strong case. Even if they were not interested in commercializing at the time.

I think in today's world, he would definitely be sued.

Companies can can do claim that ideas from employees are a company resource, even when worker is paid hourly and off the clock and the idea was on the employees own time.

Today, it would be illegal for HP to sue him for it after having declined to take up the product when the employee first offered it to the company, because CA labor law explicitly addresses this situation.

This is in fact one of the ways that an employee can retain rights to an IP or product that is otherwise within the scope of the company's active businesses.

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