Getting my patent back from IBM

[PapaPhil]

Hello,
I was an IBM employee. I submitted a patent idea to them as part of a process to get promoted and they filed it. I left IBM and now I want to get my patent idea back from them. It was issued late last year. I contacted their patent department but they never reply.
Any ideas on how I can get the patent or just use it and if they whine about it, can I just pay them?
As you might be able to tell I am a tad bit tired of being ignored by them.
Cheers,
Phil

[MYK]

Any ideas on how I can get the patent

You assigned the application to them.  If they don't want to re-assign the patent back to you, there is nothing useful that you can do about it.  Even if they were willing, they would probably want payment for their time and efforts in obtaining the patent and doing the transfer.  This would likely be in the $10K+ range -- patent attorney legal fees for application preparation and prosecution are not cheap.  Would you actually be able to make use of it yourself?  Is it worth that to you?

If you really, really want ownership of the IP, then you would need to contact their legal department, talk to someone directly about it, and make the case that they aren't using it so they may as well sell it back to you.

or just use it and if they whine about it, can I just pay them?

As you might guess, this would put you at legal risk of being sued for infringement.  Because the infringement is obviously willful -- you're fully aware of the issued patent -- you would be at risk of treble damages.  Whether they would bother or not depends on how economically valuable it is.  If you make significant money, you would be at much higher risk of being sued.