Yeah, if it's Pharma writing your checks, sure.
But, if you are an academic, then it will be the University that patents the idea. They will give you a cut of whatever they get for licensing it, on a sliding scale. (At my University, you get about 50-75% of the first 150K, then a much lower percentage after that, topping out around $200K per year... though they are very secretive about compensation and I could be wrong about that.) They will get paid millions for really good intellectual property, and over the course of the life of the patent (21 years, not all of which are making money) you will probably get somewhere north of a million dollars from a profitable patent. You will also get promotions and envy from the other academics, so that's nice... but you won't be shtupping supermodels by your pool in Beverly Hills.
The reason the University pays academics for IP is because if they don't, the patent can be voided more easily in court. Unless all people who contributed to the work are adequately (not fairly, just adequately) compensated, the judge can rule that the patent is not valid and toss it into the public domain. Whoops!
As a corporate employee, your work is the property of your employer, but principal investigators are not considered employees of the University since they are funded by the NIH or other sources. (If they were employees of the University, the University would have to pick up the tab for the research.) So, it is different for academia, but not *much* different. Heck, at Purdue the investigators are *expected* to generate income for the University via IP... and if you don't, good luck getting tenure. It's getting tough even in the Ivory Tower Kingdom nowadays.
If you work for Pharma, yes, you will get a shiny pen and a big corporate thank you. Then, you'd better produce something else awesome, or 18 mo's later you will be carrying your box out the front door, escorted by security.
This industry sucks monkeys, you know? Still, academia is slightly better, if less well-compensated, IMO.