The situation described in Professional Employees and Works for Hire is very common, particularly in the United States. It should be expected, you sign a contract, they own you. What's not usually expected is for the employer to be a complete ass about it. These types of moves show a deeply embedded ignorance within a company's management. I personally have lost all respect for his employer, and will definately not do any business with them until they rectify this type of behaviour.
What's worse about this is how it was just swept away and forgot about. Silence is evil. tilly contributed a lot to Perl and to the Open Source community, and where are we when one of our own needs us? Nowhere to be seen. We just go about our business. In my opinion that's beyond sad. Anyway, back to the norm...