Patenting the work, then licensing it allows companies to acquire the technology in a very straightforward and well-defined way. You want to build an X, you work out a deal with UW's patent office and they give you the information.
As a side benefit, UW gets some money and (depending how they do things) shares some with the individuals who did the work. Some of my co-workers recently went out for a lunch paid for by one of their patents--it's not a ton of money, but it's a neat thing when your past work buys you lunch.
> You want to build an X, you work out a deal with UW's patent office and they give you the information.
AFAIK, the US patent law says that you can receive a time-limited monopoly for your invention in exchange for describing it in enough detail that others can reproduce your invention. if the patent matter is only reproducible using further information excluded from the patent description then the patent is invalid, IIUC.
So rather than saying "we have a totes sweet fusion reactor design, if you pay us we'll show you the schematics", UW publishes it to the world and if somebody thinks it looks good, they pay UW some money to use the design outlined in the patent, which is theoretically sufficient to reproduce the reactor.
As a side benefit, UW gets some money and (depending how they do things) shares some with the individuals who did the work. Some of my co-workers recently went out for a lunch paid for by one of their patents--it's not a ton of money, but it's a neat thing when your past work buys you lunch.