I think this was a mistake

Walking through the streets of San Antonio, Texas, with a group of coworkers, I spilled my guts to our director of Research and Development. It was 90 degrees (F) outside and humid--he may have been a little drunk. It was 11:00 PM and we were stumbling down the old streets near the muggy riverwalk in the August heat.

I told him about an idea that I had been mentally sketching out over a couple of months--an idea for a new piece of equipment that was made possible by recent breakthroughs in multiple fields in technology--it is a unique combination of several ideas, the primary one being an old technique, which is now considered outdated, that was previously generally accepted by the scientific community. Because my professor was an old-timer, he showed several of us in the lab this technique just for kicks.

I don't have the means to produce this piece of equipment.

It may or may not be an original idea--it's hard to tell.

I think that corporations that appeal to inventors are really trying to sucker you in.

The R&D manager listened to my idea...for about 3 minutes before completely shooting it down. I was somewhat discouraged but thought that it wasn't given a fair shake.

The next night, he came to me and wanted me to describe the whole project in detail. As I laid it out over about an hour and a half, complete with hasty, uneven drawings on the back of a cocktail napkin, I realized that it is actually two distinct projects, one of which is almost certainly novel and the other is probably on someone's project list somewhere.

I'm REALLY SORRY to be so vague about this--hope you can follow along...

So, maybe Mr. R&D was somewhat less drunk that night, not sure. But he was impressed with my novel idea. He told me that something similar had been tried 15 years earlier by a company, but was impossible due to data processing limitations. He was intrigued.

I never heard from him again about this. I wonder if he still has that cocktail napkin.

I was later offered a job in this group, but I don't even think it was a serious offer because it wasn't for any more money, plus I would have to move...somewhere bad (and expensive). I was also consulted on several new projects that have come around since that time.

What's my next move? Or is there one?

FYI--I have no "intellectual property" agreement, so it's my idea still. Right?

Wouldn't you feel weird saying you have an idea, but it's so technologically complex that it can't be produced without the means of a large company? Do ideas like that have intrinsic worth?