And when you read "go to the employer" and "the employer said", think to yourself: My company should have a clearly defined IP policy that states how to make these requests and hopefully an associated SLA.

I sit on our IP group as an R&D representative and there are other representatives from HR as well as Legal. This allows the group to basically handle any situation that comes up efficiently and employees have a clear single point of contact. We try to ensure no request takes longer than a week to resolve, but most take minutes.