Many commercially-plausible ideas coming from research labs are in fact patented and owned by the university. Companies which use these ideas are required to pay licensing fees or to purchase the patent. (Most research universities have a "technology transfer" office for this purpose, which famously are said to either lose money or make all their profit from only one or two patents.)

As a grad student, I was required to sign documents stating (in effect) that discoveries made by use of the university's resources were owned by the university.