As someone who does ML for a living, couldn't agree more. Usually your initial research only constitutes a tiny portion of your spent resources, it's putting it in production that makes you a 500 mil company. As always the devil is in the details, and it's unreal how much can go wrong once you actually have to ACT using the model and not just theorize. Sounds like someone hasn't left academia yet...
Sometimes black markets are simply a way to get a product cheaper (or free) but the best way to beat the market is a better product and not lawyers. I used to be a heavy user of pirated PC games but have stopped completely now that game developers actively update games for years after their release. Probably a pain for the developers but the shift has lead to much better products and gives a strong incentive to legally purchase products without resorting to "strong arming" your customers.