Spinouts, much like the rest of the innovation economy, often follow certain trends – major ones you might think of are immuno-oncology, driverless vehicles and cybersecurity. That this, despite the flurry of companies in such sectors, can still pay off for universities and investors alike was illustrated nicely last month when Viralytics, an Australia-based immunotherapy developer spun out from University of Newcastle, agreed to an acquisition by pharmaceutical group Merck for A$502m ($394m).

Viralytics, a publicly-traded company on the Australian Stock Exchange, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Merck once the transaction closes – a deal that is one of the largest in the biotech sector in Australia. The impressive price is partly justified by Viralytics’ unique approach to immunotherapy, a method that has so far largely relied on engineering T-cells, a natural part of the body’s immune system, to detect and destroy cancer cells. Viralytics, however, is exploiting a form of the common cold virus to attack the disease. Whether the compound will prove successful is still up in the air, though, as it is still in phase 1 and 2 trials.

Then there are trends that universities could surely do without. When US-based blood-testing startup Theranos faced a lawsuit from its own shareholders claiming it had misled them about the technology and conned them out of money in 2016, it must have been a relief to many that this was not happening to a spinout – though our friends in the corporate and VC worlds did get caught out, with home retail chain Walgreens accusing Theranos of breach of contract and demanding $140m, the money it had invested, in damages.

Theranos never recovered from its fall from grace and neither did its founder Elizabeth Holmes – both now stand accused by US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission of committing fraud.

And yet, the past few weeks proved that things can get ugly in the university space too. The culprits here are Washington State University (WSU) and its agritech spinout Phytelligence, which are suing each other. Phytelligence alleges that WSU has blocked the spinout from commercialising apple variety “cosmic crisp” that is particularly juicy and boasts a long shelf life. WSU for its part claims Phytelligence improperly sold 135,000 of the trees to a farm. The two rival lawsuits were uncovered by news publication GeekWire, which noted that the core dispute dates back to 2012, the same year Phytelligence was spun out.

While a legal fight over an apple may seem laughable compared with a healthcare company allegedly guilty of fraud, the financial aspect is profound. Washington state is responsible for growing 70% of the US’s apples, with a production value of $2.4bn in 2016, the latest available figures from the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

And then there are trends that are trends because the actual technology never quite seems to materialise. Driverless vehicles have been one such product promised to consumers for the past few decades.

It began with the Stanford Cart, developed by James Adams as part of his PhD at Stanford University in 1961 – the vehicle required a long cable to be steered remotely. The cart was used to prove that a lunar rover could not simply be steered by someone on earth by using a camera and two-way radio signals.

The cart continued to be developed throughout the 1960s and 1970s by Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (Sail), before Sail was shut down in 1980 and some of the researchers moved on to Carnegie Mellon University to manage its Robotics Lab. One of the PhD graduates to emerge from the Robotics Lab was Sebastian Thrun, who became a member of Stanford’s faculty in 2003 and revived Sail. Thrun and some of his colleagues eventually joined internet company Google, launched its moonshot unit Google X and developed the technology that led to the creation of autonomous vehicle producer Waymo. We still do not have fully autonomous cars, but we are hearteningly close.

What is the moral of that story? Even technology that may be considered a bit of a joke for its eternal claim to be market-ready within a certain number of years will eventually reach the consumer – sometimes researchers are just too optimistic about the feasibility with current technology.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a US-based fusion power technology developer based on research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is among those companies hoping they can break the curse of being eternally “just five years from market entry”. Fusion technology has been plagued by setbacks for decades and crumbled in the face of the near-impossibility of creating what is essentially a tiny version of the sun.

But the prospect of carbon-free, limitless and safe energy is a tantalising proposition. CFS, which raised $50m from energy company Eni earlier this month, could be closer than anyone else. The company is working on large-bore superconducting electromagnets that can contain significantly more energy than traditional methods. CSF’s ambition to bring clean energy to the world by the 2030s could actually pay off. Imagine.

You might almost wonder if we will have any problems left to solve for researchers by the end of the next decade.