I worked at Broderbund many years ago. In the interview my future boss asked me if I had any game ideas. I mentioned I'd not seen a good game with the Smokey the Bear. When I started a couple of weeks later, as I was introducing myself to the other programmers, one mentioned that he's working on a Smokey the Bear pitch that came out of the blue from the boss. I mentioned it was my idea from the interview, and this programmer insisted it couldn't have been because the boss had brought it as his idea.

Fast forward a few months, I've presented 23 game concepts and they were all turned down as "not good game ideas. Two weeks later i stumbled into a meeting where one of those that turned down my idea, an artist, was presenting 3 of my ideas as his own. I companied to the boss who said: "Ideas are free". My retort was: "Sure, but the credit isn't".

That was many years ago and I still find those two people to be disgusting in their attitude.