If you read a bunch of university IP policies, you start to realize that they are fixated on the duties to implement a monopoly licensing model that is rarely articulated, and on dividing the spoils that are presumed to come from that model. Sort of like the diamond burglars insisting on being “fair” in dividing up the loot. But next to nothing that provides guidance on how IP can and should be deployed in the public interest. So, lots about disclosure and patenting, and next to nothing on publishing and teaching beyond archive journals and the classroom. Fuss about royalty shares but not about what initiatives to benefit from those shares. Worry about protecting IP so it can be used (implicitly) in monopoly licensing rather than how to engage practice communities by lowering the barriers posed by IP positions. So, these IP policies are mostly navel sniffing documents, but done out very well by professionals. The public gets next to no idea what a university’s IP intentions are in practice.
Let me summarize the upshot of such IP policies:
Make a lot of money by using IP positions as a threat.
Use the lure of lots of money to sucker in university inventors.
Use the threat of exclusion to raise the value of research IP.