I am the "CTO" of a startup of 3 members. The main product will be a web application, and I have been developing it for the last 4 months -- no pay and under no legal agreement. One of my ideas for the application involved creating an algorithm, which I did and it works great. I see uses for it outside of the limited scope of our business.
My questions are:
Am I the owner of the algorithm? I have been working without pay and have not signed any legal documents, and am the creator of the original idea.
Do I need to file a patent for the algorithm and grant usage of the algorithm to the LLC that we are forming?