Re:How to spin your scientific research out of a university ...
by dekhn on Friday October 30, 2020 @12:28PM
(#24943918)
Google paid Stanford to license the page rank patent. Stanford executed the research as part of a paid contract with the NSF. The contract did not state that the US government owns the results of the research- Stanford does.
This is an intention incentive created by the government to grow the overall enconomy, rewarding the risk takers (universities that hire PIs that do world-changing research).
(Presumably it's the university that actually owns any patents from grad students or faculty [though they do share revenue with faculty inventors I believe] and they in turn license them to Google or other companies. So it's more of a transfer of wealth from the government to universities than to companies.)