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I was working for a company where we put forward a paper with other colleagues. I was the first author and the paper got rejected. After that I left that company. Recently, I found out that they published the paper removing my name from the list of authors and they simply put me in the acknowledgements. The paper was basically the same. They did not even want to answer me when I asked for clarifications. After I asked the editor to intervene, their excuse was that because I left the company, they could not put my name as a researcher for their institution and that the research belonged to them. Because of that I had no rights for authorship. They even threatened me in case I have drafts of the first submission stating that I have no rights to take them with me when I left.
Can such claim was made and the authorship entirely removed based on the project ownership. I was clearly the main contributor

Thanks for your answers

Other responses talk about the law. However, if the paper, as I assume (after all this is academia.SE), is academic, there is another set of values that rule the matter, and that is defined by the academic rules for authorial attribution of scientific contributions; unlike patent or copyright ownership, they are not waived by working for a company.

Moral rights or not - if you have significantly contributed to the paper (as evidenced by the first submission round), academically spoken, you are a co-author. Removing you is unethical and a breach of academic rules. It is academic misconduct. There is no "ghostwriting" in academia.

Laws or not: the decision to take away a doctoral title is in many countries not a legal, but an academic decision, to be decided by the academic institution that conferred it and not by court. Similar here: the judgement whether this is academic misconduct is happening on the academic, not the legal level.

Note: the fact that they demand the drafts seems to indicate that they know this and try to deprive you of the evidence that you have been co-author on a virtually identical copy; which, if in your possession, would prove that you were a co-author and should remain so for the resubmission.

This may well be a legal trick on their side to improve their position in an academic misconduct investigation. On that part of the matter, you may need the support of a lawyer if you intend to fight, because of course, the company may have the ownership of the ideas and the copyright. But not the right to remove you as co-author.

This will also depend on legislation.

The particular IP rights of concern here are the so-called Moral rights which include the right to attribution.

In some legislations (e.g. in continental Europe) the moral rights cannot be transferred or waived (only the rights for economic exploitation are transferred to the employer), while in others (e.g. US) this is possible.

(It is probably their right to demand that you do not take any work-related documents such as the drafts with you. Where I am, even academic employers can do that, and I've had one such employer who excercised that right.

I'd expect that your [competing] rights to keep material that allows you to defend/proove your position in case of a litigation at court between you and the [former] employer to be extremely dependent on legislation. Here in Germany, you would probably not be allowed to keep the draft - instead you'd have to ask the court to order the employer to show that draft if needed.)

Update: link to academic authorship rules

@CaptainEmacs correctly points out that academic authorship follows an additional set of rules.

I expect that at some point during the submission of the paper the [remaining] authors have signed paperwork where they

e.g. the Committee On Publication Ethics sets as a minimal standard for journals in their Authorship:

At a minimum, authors should guarantee that they have participated in creating the work as presented and that they have not violated any other author’s legal rights (eg, copyright) in the process

IMHO, signing the respective statement "pulls" the academic authorship rules into a legally binding contract.

For OP, I see three possible approaches (short of letting the affair slide):

• Getting legal advise. Many academic institutions do have ombudspersons that are experienced with such situations. Even if the old employer is not an academic institution, it may be possible to get a legal opinion at a nearby university. Even if the ombudsperson says they are not allowed to advise outsiders, they should at least be able to point OP to someone (lawyer) who is knowledgable/specialized on such trouble.


• Contact the journal. As the journal's reputation and integrity depends on their contracts with their authors being as they claim, they should look into this.


• 
  COPE also has a database of cases and OP may look whether they have given recommendations for situations as theirs.
  
  I had a quick glance and the involvement of a non-academic employer may make this a case without precedent. Usually, COPE seems to recommend that authorship disputes should be settled by the [academic] institution which is obviously expected to have a procedure in place for such happenings. These reports (IMHO rightly) notice that it is very difficult for a journal editor to actually find out authorship - they can usually rely only on what they are told whereas an institutional investigation has access to the actual documents/emails/draft versions etc.
  
  This is going to be very difficult in OP's case.

In addition to @Captain Emacs' fine answer:

An academic paper is inter alia a testimony by the authors that the facts and theses presented therein are correct and true to the best of the authors' knowledge. Centuries of experience has shown that the scientific method rigorously requires this personal accountability.

Although the authors' names traditionally are placed under the title of the paper, the names might as well appear at the end of the document, under a declaration such as "We, the undersigned, do hereby aver and testify that the facts and theses presented above..." etc. etc.

If you remove your name from the authorship of a paper, you are stating that you no longer believe that the contents of the paper are scientifically sound.

If someone else removes your name from the authorship of a paper, that person is stating that you no longer believe that the contents of the paper are scientifically sound. This is fraud; there is no other term for it.

Your ex-employer may be free to make any use of your work product, but your ex-employer is not free to make false claims about what you are prepared to testify to. If you were disposed to bring a lawsuit, this would seem to be your best basis on which to seek relief.