I don't see any reason why the researchers couldn't have placed their discovery in the public domain, just as Tim Berners-Lee did with his ideas.
Unfortunately many universities (and hence researchers) are under pressure to commercialise their IP, based on the assumption that such behaviour is beneficial to the economy.
1. Get a patent, find a commercial partner and investors who will give you a ton of money to develop it in the hopes of getting a return.
2. Make it public domain, remove any financial incentive to develop it, then try and convince whoever to give you hundreds of millions of dollars to develop it without any hope of financial return?
Those are not the only options. Free and open source innovations can create enormous economic opportunities - witness Linux, the Web, etc etc. Even now, unpatented medicines are widely commercially available and making some people a lot of money.
This is the sort of thing that requires and international treaty.