I believe University of Waterloo is one of the few that does full ownership of work by Prof (I could be wrong) .. and year after year, they beat the biggest Universities in Canada for being ranked as the #1 in entrepreneurship, tech commercialization and innovation. I think its the subsequent economic impact that counts, rather than sequestering innovation for the sake of a few bucks in 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 ownership model.
Agreed; I'm a researcher at an institution where the researchers get 1/3rd (split among all the patent authors). That fraction is okay with me. We get a huge boost from having access to the university community and the department's resources.
The only annoyance is that the 1/3rd comes from the University's profits, not revenue. The costs of the patent application, including the tech-transfer office salaries, are subtracted first.
I think the point goes towards the idea that the rewards should be related to the risk.
Commercializing IP - which is not a product yet - is non-trivial, could take years to productize, and then longer to penetrate (or create) a market. In short, it's a long, painful, and often expensive process that often fails anyway. If there was a way to provide a license agreement that was more favorable to product/market validation, that could change the economics.
Unfortunately, I've only participated in licensing once, so I don't have an alternative model to suggest.
Since the income generated is taxed anyway, Some of the proceeds go back to where they came from. An investment of sorts. The university and commercialization office should probably get cuts more commensurate with their contributions, whatever that may be.
