My point has nothing to do with sympathy. I’m talking about the impact on the public of monetizing R&D one way versus another.

Additionally, the companies pay the salaries of engineers and researchers who did the work. If your point is that engineers and researchers don’t get paid enough for the value they create, you’re talking about a completely distinct issue that has more to do with the structure of corporations generally.

It takes more than engineers to make a standard. The organizational infrastructure, investment in those engineers, associated risks if the investment doesn't bear fruit, engagement with the capital markets necessary to provide the financial infrastructure to keep the blood flow of money pumping... There's a heck of a lot more going to make any moderate R&D project happen. Why is the engineer more important than the many people required to make the organization function in a way that makes the engineer's work possible in the first place?

Maybe people at the top get too much of the compensation, but what about the network technicians and IT departments that provided a functional work environment? What about building maintenance? What is harder, the research involved, or learning & navigating knowledge of the legal and financial mechanisms necessary for large complex organizations with a thousand interlinking pieces to other organizations? Who should get more compensation when the absence of any one component, not just the researchers, might have caused failure?

I want to be clear though: I'm not defending astronomical compensation of the very few at the top. I'm saying that if there's inequity here, it doesn't begin or end with the engineers and researchers. Its victims are the sum total of all the people, all of the functions, without which the system fails.