[pacman2]

"only 50% cut if something works,"

This is still very generous. I know salaries are very low for PhD students but it is still a generous offer. I think my US university was 1/3 Uni, 1/3 Prof, 1/3 PhDs. They even handed stocks to a Post-doc with a 6 figure sum.

In an company you may get nothing or very very little.

Wiki: "In United States, however, an employee may have to sign over the rights to an invention without any special compensation. Germany has a law on employees' inventions providing strict rules concerning the transfer of rights to an invention to the employer. It also prescribes mandatory compensation of employees for inventions they make."

What is worse, that in some countries this also covers invention, unrelated to your field of employment. Wage-slave I guess.