[mjn]

My 2nd-hand (but family) knowledge about the energy business is that there're no royalties for patents there either. You get paid anywhere from $10 (really) to a few $hundred for a successful patent filing. My impression is that the aversion to royalties isn't mainly worry about the amount of royalty payments (them not wanting to give you 1% of something that turns into a blockbuster patent), but more that they don't want to deal with the legal complications that could result from not owning their patent portfolio free & clear.

Particularly the case since it's patent portfolios that are valuable more than individual patents. If they had a regular policy of small-percentage royalty share, a company could well end up with a portfolio of 10,000 patents that has maybe 15,000 or 20,000 royalty-share agreements attached to it. That would be hugely more risky to manage than just 10,000 patents owned by the company with no riders attached. For example, say the company wants to sell this portfolio. A sale of the portfolio could potentially be held up by any of those 15,000+ people objecting that the terms prejudice their contractual agreement to a share of revenue. A share of a patent's revenues is a valuable quasi-ownership interest guaranteed by some contract terms, so any sales or other dealings that might impact it could be challenged by the contract holder. Even if any challenge is ultimately unsuccessful, having your portfolio encumbered by tens of thousands of people with some kind of claim on it is undesirable.