america is so fucking based man
in any proper country that company at least gets forced to pay by the government then ordered to shut down forever due to wanton cruelty. all the employees get generous severance except whoever made that call. depending upon your view of carceral punishment there are a few ways to go with that guy.
It’s the same for engineering.
The government funds all those small pieces of knowledge through various grants. Some are private, but most are from the government.
Then someone will take those bits of knowledge and assemble them into a new drug. 90% of the boring research is already done.
My employer pays me and my team a lot of money to develop new engineering projects based on these academic papers. Everything is cited, and normally the grad students are ecstatic to be named as contributing work. Their names don’t show up on the design patent, but if someone digs into it they can see all the work that contributed.
You might not see it at your level, and I am truly sorry for that because you deserve credit for your work.