Academic inventions outside the university: A result of industry sponsorship or entrepreneurial activities?

Cornelia Lawson

Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis LEI & BRICK - Laboratory of Economics of Innovation "Franco Momigliano", Bureau of Research in Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge, Collegio Carlo Alberto. WP series from University of Turin

Abstract: This paper investigates the link between firms and academic inventors on firm-assigned academic patents for a sample of UK academics. The first descriptive results show that 43% of firm assigned patents are in fact owned by a university spin-off. The empirical analysis finds that a strong appropriation regime at a university encourages patents owned by the university or its spin-offs. Public research funds and technology transfer grants are also associated with university or spin-off owned patent s. Government incentives and funding regulations thus are a successful strategy to encourage and maintain university ownership of patents. Industry sponsorship on the other hand encourages firm ownership of patents, whether these are private firms or university spin-offs. A more detailed analysis of funding links shows that 41% of non-spin-off firms also have funding agreements with the university; however, the remaining 59% of firms have no apparent link to researchers that could explain ownership of university inventions.

Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ino and nep-sbm
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http://www.est.unito.it/do/home.pl/Download?doc=/a ... 16_wp_momigliano.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Academic Inventions Outside the University: Investigating Patent Ownership in the UK (2013)
Working Paper: Academic Patenting: Opportunity, Support or Attitude? (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uto:labeco:201216

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