Institutional changes and the commercialization of academic knowledge: A study of Italian universities’ patenting activities between 1965 and 2002

This paper focuses on Italian universities’ patenting activities between 1965 and 2002 and on the way they were affected by internal IPR regulations, set as part of broader responses to the increased level of autonomy granted to universities during the 1990s. Our analyses are based on a unique dataset including detailed information on all patents filed by Italian universities and university-level characteristics. Results show that: (1) in the last 10 years, the number of Italian university patents rose substantially; (2) patenting activities almost tripled in universities with an internal IPR regulation, after controlling for several universities’ characteristics, previous patenting activity and time trends; (3) each time a university creates its own patent regulation, there is a 9% increase in the likelihood that universities without any internal patent regulation will adopt one. Implications for university technology transfer policies are discussed.     

Foreign patenting in the U.S. as a technology indicator: The case of Norway

Foreign patenting in the U.S. has been considered to be a useful technology indicator in comparisons between countries. In order to shed light on this topic, this paper will try to explain foreign patenting in the U.S. by way of data for one country - Norway.A crucial question is what role is played by exports in explaining the foreign patent activity. Is the U.S. patenting just an indicator of the export performance, or is it the other way around; that technology - measured by foreign patent activity - is an important trade explanatory variable.The first part of this paper deals with the relationship between Norwegian U.S. patenting and export to the U.S. by way of time-series analysis on data from 1883 to 1980. Then some more detailed analysis are done on industry-level data from 1920 and from 1960–1980. An hypothesis is further tested for the possible relationship between foreign U.S. patenting and the international business-cycles. Finally a detailed but tentative analysis is done on firm-level data for the years 1969–1980.The results lend partial support to the assumption that foreign U.S. patent activity reflects innovative activity in the country where the patents originated. A major advantage in using foreign patenting in the U.S. as a technology indicator, is that this type of data in general seems to be of a higher quality than domestic patent data.     

Are patenting scientists the better scholars?: An exploratory comparison of inventor-authors with their non-inventing peers in nano-science and technology

This paper explores the relationship between scientific publication and patenting activity. More specifically, it examines for the field of nano-science and nano-technology whether researchers who both publish and patent are more productive and more highly cited than their peers who concentrate on scholarly publication in communicating their research results. This study is based on an analysis of the nano-science publications and nano-technology patents of a small set of European countries. While only a very few nano-scientists appear to hold patents in nano-technology, many nano-inventors seem to be actively publishing nano-science research. Overall, the patenting scientists appear to outperform their solely publishing (non-inventing) peers in terms of publication counts and citation frequency. However, a closer examination of the highly active and highly cited nano-authors points to a slightly different situation. While still over-represented among the highly cited authors, inventor-authors appear not to be among the most highly cited authors in that category, with a single notable exception. One policy implication is that, generally speaking, patenting activity does not appear to have an adverse impact on the publication and citation performance of researchers.     

Are patenting scientists the better scholars?: An exploratory comparison of inventor-authors with their non-inventing peers in nano-science and technology

This paper explores the relationship between scientific publication and patenting activity. More specifically, it examines for the field of nano-science and nano-technology whether researchers who both publish and patent are more productive and more highly cited than their peers who concentrate on scholarly publication in communicating their research results. This study is based on an analysis of the nano-science publications and nano-technology patents of a small set of European countries. While only a very few nano-scientists appear to hold patents in nano-technology, many nano-inventors seem to be actively publishing nano-science research. Overall, the patenting scientists appear to outperform their solely publishing (non-inventing) peers in terms of publication counts and citation frequency. However, a closer examination of the highly active and highly cited nano-authors points to a slightly different situation. While still over-represented among the highly cited authors, inventor-authors appear not to be among the most highly cited authors in that category, with a single notable exception. One policy implication is that, generally speaking, patenting activity does not appear to have an adverse impact on the publication and citation performance of researchers.     

企业专利行为及其影响因素 ——基于浙江的分析

 国内外关于企业专利行为及其影响因素的研究有较多争议。本文通过对浙江企业的实证调查分析指出,专利保护的加强提高了企业的专利意识,促进了企业的专利活动。同时,专利产出还与企业规模、产业规模正相关。目前,私营企业已经成为我国专利活动的主力,但私营企业的专利能力与外资企业还有很大的差距,有专利活动的私营企业的数量也太少。总体上,我国企业的技术与专利能力、专利技术市场的发育程度亟待提高。     

1985～2002年台湾地区在大陆专利活动分析

随着两岸交流的增多，台湾在大陆的专利活动也日益频繁。在全面描述台湾在大陆专利活动的基础上，对存在的问题进行深入分析，力求能够推动两岸专利合作的全面发展。     

Rates of invention: international patent comparisons

The increased patenting activity of foreign nationals in the United States has been a source of recent concern, and the fear has been expressed that the US is becoming relatively less technologically inventive. This paper investigates some possible causes of the increased foreign patenting activity and also briefly examines the determinants of patent filings by a country's own residents. The countries covered include: Canada, France, West Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.Based on data on patent applications filed and some preliminary regression analysis, the paper finds that the rising foreign patenting activity in the US probably does not reflect increased foreign inventiveness vis-à-vis the US. However, foreign innovativeness may be increasing relative to the US. Over the period 1963 – 1974, the domestic patent base, measured by the number of patent applications filed by nationals in their home countries, has shown little change in any country except for Japan. Rather, multiple patent applications and a greater propensity to patent abroad, induced by the possibilities of exporting, appear to be the sources of the increase in foreign patent applications in the US and also in Japan.     

高校科研人员专利行为对学术影响力的实证研究

当前我国高校科研人员的专利行为快速增长,如何有效平衡学术研究的公共属性和专利行为的私权属性是高校面临的重要问题。以2008-2017年112所“211”高校及省部级共建高校多专业科研人员的专利行为和学术影响力相关数据构建研究数据库,综合运用负二项回归和二元Logistics回归,实证分析高校科研人员专利行为在“申请-授权”和“授权-交易”两阶段特征对其学术影响力的影响效应。研究表明：高校科研人员的专利申请数量与学术影响力之间存在显著的倒U型关系,随着专利申请数的增加,学术影响力受到的正向影响会增加,当专利申请数达到年均35项左右时,出现负向影响;当高校科研人员采用独占许可进行专利交易时,学术影响力会受到显著的抑制效应。为我国高校专利的全过程管理和相关政策制定提供了参考依据。     

How venture capitalists spur invention in Spain: Evidence from patent trajectories

Venture capitalists (VCs) fund the development of promising inventions to turn them into marketable innovations. During this development stage portfolio firms are likely to garner even more inventions at least until the product is fully developed. Once the product is fully developed the focus shifts from development to sales so the number of generated inventions should decrease. This behavior implies that VCs are likely to spur invention according to an inverted U-shape over time. We empirically examine whether patent trajectories are consistent with this hypothesized inverted U-shape using a self-collected dataset containing 233 VC-backed firms and a large set of controls operating in Spain. We find that firms’ patenting activity increases after VC investments. This increase is substantially more pronounced the first two years following VC investments, i.e., patent trajectories follow an inverted U-shape over time. Our more demanding specifications suggest that the sharp increase in patenting right after VCs’ investments is caused by a positive treatment effect over and beyond any likely selection effect. Moreover, we defend that the increase in patenting is not just due to the fact that VCs give money so that firms can patent pre-VC inventions, but also to the fact that VCs fund the development of inventions.     

Are patents signals for the IPO market? An EU–US comparison for the software industry

This study investigates empirically whether patents can be signals to financial markets, thus reducing problems of asymmetric information. In particular we study how patenting behaviour impacts on the way investors perceive software firms’ growth potential through an increase in the amount invested at the initial public offering (IPO) of firms in the US and Europe. This study performs regressions on the relationship of patent applications before IPO and the amount of money collected at the IPO, while controlling other factors that may influence IPO performance. We also attempt to account for a potential source of endogeneity problems that can arise for self-selection bias and simultaneity between the number of patent applications prior to going public and the amount of money collected at IPO. We find significant and robust positive correlations between patent applications and IPO performance. The signalling power of patenting is significantly different for US and European companies, and is related to the difficulty in obtaining a signal and its scarcity. An additional patent application prior to IPO increases IPO proceeds by about 0.507% and 1.13% for US and European companies, respectively. Results suggest that a less ‘applicant friendly’ patenting system increases the credibility of patents as signals and their value for IPO investors.     

Spatial differences in the quality of university patenting: Do regions matter?

This paper uses patent citation data to analyze the quality of university technology across European regions. The empirical analysis draws on a panel dataset of 4580 European university-owned patents classified by 202 European regions over the period 1998-2004. The methodology involves a multilevel framework to identify the effects of factors at three hierarchical levels (individual, university, and regional) on the quality of university patenting. The results suggest that regional factors, such as the level of development, industrial potential, and regional higher education R&D expenditure, do not play any significant role in determining the quality of European university patents. We instead find that the factors affecting patent quality stem from their specific characteristics. We also find that university size does not explain the quality of patents. However, there is significant unobserved heterogeneity at the university level in all models, suggesting that differences in other university characteristics explain a substantial part of the variance in patent quality.     

Commercializing the laboratory: Faculty patenting and the open science environment

This paper investigates the relationship between patenting and publication of research results by university faculty members. Our study adds to the limited evidence on this topic with an empirical investigation based on a panel data set for a broad sample of university researchers. Results suggest that publication and patenting are complementary, not substitute, activities for faculty members. This is not consistent with recent concerns regarding deleterious effects of patenting on the research output of faculty members. Average citations to publications, however, appear to decline for repeat patenters, suggesting either a decrease in quality or restrictions on use associated in patent protection.     

Changes to university IPR regulations in Europe and the impact on academic patenting

This article develops a general framework to describe the changes in university IPR regulations in Europe and their effects on the patenting activities of universities and on knowledge transfer processes. Understanding the effects of changes in IPR regulations on academic patenting is a complex issue, and parallels with the US case can be misleading. First, despite the general trend towards institutional ownership, university IPR regulations in Europe remain extremely differentiated and there is no one-to-one mapping to the US system. Second, it is difficult to disentangle the quantitative and qualitative effects of changes in IPR ownership regulations on academic patenting activities from the effects of concurrent transformations in the institutional, cultural and organizational landscape surrounding academic knowledge transfer. The article proposes a review and typological classification of national university IPR ownership systems on the basis of their development since 2000, and uses it to analyze the aggregate dynamics of academic patent ownership in several European countries. The analysis of patterns of ownership of academic patents shows that there has been a general increase in university patenting since 1990, with a significant slowdown (and even reduction in some countries) after early 2000s accompanied by a switch in academic patents ownership in favor of university ownership though preserving the European specificity of high company ownership of academic invented patents.     

Inventing by combining pre-existing technologies: Patent evidence on learning and fishing out

I develop a model of innovation where new technologies are combinations of pre-existing technological components. The model captures two opposing forces. The best ideas are used up (knowledge is exhaustible). However, as firms learn which technologies can be combined, new ideas become feasible (knowledge accumulates). I test the model with more than 80 years of US patent data. Technological components are proxied by 13,517 patent office technology classifications. These are reused and recycled in 10,000 distinct three-component sets. Consistent with a learning/fishing-out dynamic, I show patenting in one set of components is correlated with a subsequent increase in similar patents (sharing two of three components), but a subsequent decrease in identical patents (sharing all three components). I use patent renewal data to show my results are not driven by changes in demand for various technology bundles. My results suggest the positive impact of learning on subsequent patenting is larger than the negative impact of fishing out.     

我国“杜拜法规”对高校专利与许可的影响研究

运用实证与案例研究方法,评估我国类似美国杜拜法案的法规对高校专利及许可的影响。结果表明:该法规促进了高校专利的增长,但仅是影响因素之一;对高校专利许可的促进作用不如对专利的作用明显;对不同层次高校的专利和许可影响不同。     

Exploring the cross-country gap in patenting: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

This paper benchmarks the patent activities of a sample of OECD countries against the world frontier and explores the sources of the cross-country differences in patenting (regarded as a proxy for innovation). A patent production frontier is estimated for a panel of 21 OECD countries over the 1990-2002 period using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Patenting performance for each country is decomposed into basic patenting capacity and patenting efficiency. The gap between Europe and the world leaders in terms of basic patenting capacity remains substantial with little sign of convergence over the sample period. In terms of patenting efficiency, Japan, Germany and Italy have improved their relative position in recent years. The gap in patenting performance between the UK and the world frontier is due to relative underperformance in both patenting capacity and efficiency in patent production. Institutional factors are found to be significantly associated with the patenting efficiency of an economy.     

Technological development and political stability: Patenting in Latin America and the Caribbean

We examine the effect of national political institutions on patent application rates. The expected future value of a patent, like any other form of property, depends at least partially on certainty about the future. In circumstances where policy stability is greatest, and hence political uncertainty least, one should expect more aggressive pursuit of intellectual property rights. We test these ideas using a 27 year panel of Latin American and Caribbean nations, estimating US patent applications and domestic patent applications by local inventors for each observation, and holding other economic and technological inputs to innovation constant. Our principal finding is that political stability matters to patenting. For US patent applications institutional system tenure, regardless of system type, increases patent applications. For domestic patent applications, institutional stability has either a weakly negative or insignificant effect, a result we attribute to generally escalating local patenting standards over time. The type of government influences both US and domestic patent applications rates, with a veto-players institutional coding better predicting marginal patenting rates than regime type.     

纳米科学与技术之间的联系:基于学术型发明人的分析

本文聚焦于从事纳米研究的学术型发明人,即大学中同时具有国际期刊论文作者和专利发明人双重身份的研究人员(author-inventor),他们是联结纳米科学与纳米技术的纽带.通过比较学术型发明人和非学术型发明人的论文数量、被引频次和H指数,本文发现学术型发明人的研究绩效显著高于纯学术研究者,并且在高产作者和高影响力作者行列中占有更高的比例.本文使用负二项回归模型分析了专利活动对于学术型发明人研究绩效的作用,发现专利数量对于论文数量呈正向作用,但对论文质量有副作用.最后,本文给出了相关政策建议.     

Have university knowledge flows narrowed?: Evidence from patent data

The rate of university patenting increased dramatically during the 1980s. Did the manner in which knowledge embedded in university patents was managed change during this period of rapid patenting growth? Using a Herfindahl-type measure of knowledge flow concentration and employing a difference-in-differences estimation to compare university-to-firm patent citations across two time periods, we find that the university diffusion premium (the degree to which university knowledge outflows are more widely distributed than those of firms) declined by more than half during the 1980s. In addition, we find that the university diversity premium (the degree to which knowledge inflows used by universities are drawn from a more widely distributed set of prior art holders than those used by firms) also declined by more than half. However, these changes are mostly limited to a narrow set of technology fields (i.e., biotechnology and pharmaceuticals in the outflows case and sub-fields of electronics in the inflows case). The social welfare implications are ambiguous.     

Behind the recent surge of Chinese patenting: An institutional view

This paper examines a number of forces that have possibly contributed to the explosive growth of Chinese patenting over the past decade. After a review of previous hypotheses and conventional wisdom, this study proposes an additional explanation and argues that patent subsidy programs implemented by each provincial region have played an important role in the growth of Chinese patenting. This institutional change, taking place at the province-level, has induced an increase in patent propensity among not only firms, universities, and research institutes, but also individuals. Empirical evidence based on publicly available data provides solid support for this argument. It was also found that a larger fraction of applications are granted patent rights since the implementation of such programs, suggesting that reduction in patent application quality may not be a serious concern, unless the criteria used for patent examination have been lowered.