Even the most graduate-school-inspired businesses are about 5% pre-existing research and 95% solving a problem people will pay for. Academic research is, almost by definition, solving problems that people will not yet pay for (I say this having been a graduate student and professor, and now in the startup game).

I'd encourage you to think about what marketable problems you are well-equipped to solve, rather than thinking about what you can do to sell your pre-existing research. The former is the essence of a startup and the latter is, on average, a recipe for disappointment.

On the legal matters: the University will almost certainly license the idea to you. Universities are not in the business of business, so just holding the patent is not particularly useful to them. They want someone to go out and start a business around the idea. You would be a good candidate for that. There is essentially no chance that they won't license it to you if you are credibly starting a business around it (though they'll probably want some kind of stake in the company). This is exactly the situation Google has: Stanford owns the PageRank patent and licenses it to Google in return for (I believe) a portion of Google's early stock.

Thanks for all that info. You made a good point about having something that is marketable before wanting to start a company. I have actually done just that. I have been demoing my research through marketable applications from the start. On application is actually directly helpful to a product that the school is developing. So they license it to me, and I sell it back to them (kinda funny)?

To tell you the truth, my only problem is with the university wanting a huge stake, and leaving me and my fellow partners with very little for our hard work.

Thanks for the help I appreciate.

My university had an intellectual property office. I'd ask around your the engineering department for for their student liaison or the name of someone who won't yank you around.

They IP office would regularly send someone to the larger engineering classes when I was in undergrad. Hopefully you will be able to sit down with a cool cat and walk out a single page waiver.

I'm guessing you will have a harder time getting what I call an IP waiver if you are on a full ride vs paying sticker price for your degree.

Thanks for this. I did not know such a waiver existed. I searched the "Office of Research" website of my school, but I did not find any information regarding such a waiver. I will talk to a professor to see if my school has such a thing.

Also one of my professors said that schools don't usually go after students making companies with university related research. Unless the company gets really big. But if the company gets big, then they could easily settle with some cash.

Counting your eggs way before they're hatched. If you become a successful company you can deal with it then. Start doing what you wanna do with it, if any success appears on the horizon then think about all this.

What you said is actually what I have been moving towards. I'm just gonna worry about it later, and start the startup.