[barber5]

It probably won't actually matter but it could for some who do something similar to you, but are you sure you actually own your research and that the IP doesn't belong to the university? That's another reason not to do a PhD that was relevant for me: the ability to have more control over the value I was creating rather than giving it to the university to dispose of.

[geophile]

I don't think anyone "owns" it. The research was published, and anyone can read the papers and then perhaps build something with it. That is true of the vast majority of academic research. There is no IP in the form of something that could be patented, because a published idea would count as prior art.

Commercial efforts started by people employed by the university are a completely different matter, and universities have rules about how much time can be spent on such efforts (including consulting), and about ownership of companies established by faculty.