[shasheene]

As part of the exact employment contract, a researcher's work may be patented by the institute they work for (with the researcher being remunerated for this).

Biomedical patents are not trivial software patents. Billions of dollars of investment goes into developing a single new therapy. The molecular structure of medicine can often be easily replicated once discovered, so patents are a key part of commercializing new medicine and techniques. (See the CRISPR-Cas9 patent debacle.) Taking the right to patent some work away from the institute it was developed at means theft of the licensing fees derived from the patent, and an impact on an institute's ability to keep funding R&D.

[knzhou]

Your typical research doesn't lead to billions in licensing fees. 99% of research produces nothing of direct monetary value at all, and research that does is generally done in startups or pharma/biotech companies, where the rules are far more stringent than in university-affiliated labs. Still, of course you are right that this is all a gray area.

[mattkrause]

While the vast majority of academic labs aren’t producing finished products like drugs, it’s not uncommon for researchers to obtain patents on certain promising leads.

Most universities have a “tech transfer” office that helps with this (the university usually gets a share) and tries to find licensees.

[matz1]

Let say the chinese able to finished the research and achieve result then why can't then the original researcher or anyone just stole that again ?