> Seems like a strange proposition, I take all the risk of creating a new technology that will likely fail, and then if I beat the odds and succeed I'm capped at 150k?

This is more than most employees at companies get for patents. 15% is normal in academia. In almost all companies, the employee gets a bonus (which could be less than $1000), and that's it. It's very rare for a company to give an employee a percentage of the profits off a patent.