Is there also an aspect of "ownership"?
In my day a discovery made eg by a PhD research where grant funded from public money was in the public domain. But these days so often a public money funded research project seems to end-up being the ownership of the researcher who goes set-up up their own private company exploiting those patents they now own, nothing back to the public who funded the discovery.
So if a discovery is reported in a less widespread language and the research repeated, later research resulting in patents, are patent lawyers expected to trawl back through all less widespread language publications to verify who actually discovered whatever?
Ah, well you've come to the right place, sir.
Academics, including post docs, are employees. Assuming they develop IP that is related to the purpose of their employment, their employer, the university normally, owns it automatically.
Students, including PhD students, own their own results because they are not employees.
This does not absolve the university from the obligation to publish work and protect IP (often a blanket contractual obligation under a grant), but they need to persuade the student to assign rights in order to do so. There is rarely or never a tension when it comes to academic publications, but it needs doing on a case by case basis if they invent something and the university wants to protect it.
Normally explaining how much it will cost gets it over the line.
Academics spending some of their time on spinouts is normal. Firstly, the revenue sharing for revenue arising from patents for academics is incredibly generous compared to other employers. Secondly, most academic contracts specifically allow a certain number of hours doing consultancy.
Switched on academics can thereby have their paws in quite a few pots. But although there are exceptions, not many make much money this way..
