Currently in most Technical Companies in the U.S.A. there is a common practice to sign over patent and intellectual rights to the company as part of the Employment agreement. This practice is known as Pre-Invention Assignment agreements.
Ambiguity makes it possible for ideas on personal time to become claimable property. The engineer, scientist, inventor, artists in many cases never see more than a small lump sum less than 1000 dollars, out of billions made.
This practice stifles innovation as there's no incentive to create new technologies without legal and professional risk. This also block as a Path to the american dream as creative thinking is not rewarded. This puts the U.S. at risk technologically to other countries that do not allow this. Examples being Japan, Germany, France.