I'm about to start work on an academic project that, if it goes spectacularly well, will make someone else a couple billion dollars. I'm not going to see any of that money and I know that going in. I just get the credit.
I'm okay with this arrangement. I don't want to run a billion dollar company. They get their money and I get my credit. However, I'll find it very unfair if they get the billion dollars and I get stiffed for my credit.
I was part of a university group that designed and built the first real-time baseband processor for 802.11a wireless LANs. In the timeline, we were sandwiched between the patent holders (CSIRO) and the start-up (Radiata). We removed the risk, by figuring out that it was possible to actually build the idea that CSIRO proposed, and filling in the details, such as how one built a real-time FFT (in 1995) and how to do the error correction. The result of the research was a paper in IEEE Micro [1], so we got the "credit", but how many people mention the Macquarie University team in the same breath as CSIRO (Prime Minister's Award+$1b royalties) and Radiata ($560 million)? When money is involved, people don't like complicated structures, with too many names attached.
The article asks for credit, not wealth split.
The concept of VR goggles is decades old, but going from goggles that work in theory to goggles that work in practice takes a lot of real innovation - and whoever implements that is able to patent the innovated concepts and earn money for it.
If the concept of "two really inexpensive lenses, put a SmartPhone screen a few inches away, and wrap the whole thing in an inexpensive housing" is novel and invented by prof. Bolas, then Oculus Rift will likely be paying him patent royalties. If that concept wasn't novel, or the implementation (i.e., actual invention) was performed by someone else, then nothing should be done.