This case (US v Dubilier Condenser) from 1933 makes an interesting point regarding the idea of a patent as a “monopoly” (citations removed, my bold):
Though often so characterized a patent is not, accurately speaking, a monopoly, for it is not created by the executive authority at the expense and to the prejudice of all the community except the grantee of the patent. The term ‘monopoly’ connotes the giving of an exclusive privilege for buying, selling, working, or using a thing which the public freely enjoyed prior to the grant. Thus a monopoly takes something from the people. An inventor deprives the public of nothing which it enjoyed before his discovery, but gives something of value to the community by adding to the sum of human knowledge. He may keep his invention secret and reap its fruits indefinitely. In consideration of its disclosure and the consequent benefit to the community, the patent is granted. An exclusive enjoyment is guaranteed him for seventeen years, but, upon the expiration of that period, the knowledge of the invention inures to the people, who are thus enabled without restriction to practice it and profit by its use. To this end the law requires such disclosure to be made in the application for patent that others skilled in the art may understand the invention and how to put it to use.
A patent as an “exclusive enjoyment”. That would make the university claims in faculty inventions a fight over who gets the exclusive enjoyment and would make licensing a form of, er, sharing the joy. I haven’t found that in any university IP policies yet. I guess “ownership” and “public benefit” are more boardroom-like terms for what’s going on.