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Cornelia Lawson Collegio Carlo Alberto University of Torino

Academic inventions outside the university A result of industry sponsorship, consulting or entrepreneurial activities?. Cornelia Lawson Collegio Carlo Alberto University of Torino. APE-INV Workshop, Leuven, 11/05/2012. Academic inventions outside the university.

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Cornelia Lawson Collegio Carlo Alberto University of Torino

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  1. Academic inventions outside the universityA result of industry sponsorship, consulting or entrepreneurial activities? Cornelia Lawson Collegio Carlo Alberto University of Torino APE-INV Workshop, Leuven, 11/05/2012

  2. Academic inventions outside the university In Europe a large proportion of academic inventions are owned by private firms (Geuna and Nesta, 2006; Lissoni et al., 2008) UK: 50% Sweden: 82% France: 64% Italy: 74% Belgian 65% USA: 24% Sources: Callaert and van Looy, 2012; Lissoni et al., 2008; Sterzi, 2012; Thursby et al., 2009

  3. Why are these inventions owned by firms? Three major explanations: University Start-Ups new company, which may still be owned by the university, facilitating the commercialisation of the new invention These inventions may less basic, more important and more able to create immediate financial returns (Thursby et al., 2009) In US 39% are spin-offs (Thursby et al., 2009) Industry sponsors academic research Joint research with IP agreements (Verspagen, 2006; Thursby et al., 2009 Knowledge of these agreements is limited and there has been little evidence confirming the link between sponsorship and patent ownership Positive effect of industry funding on propensity to patent and quality of patents (Hottenrott and Thorwarth, 2011; Lawson, 2012) Consulting - bypassing university administration (Thursby et al., 2009)

  4. What I want to contribute 1. Identify companies that own academic patents and match them to sponsors of academic research. 2. Find measures for these three activities to predict firm ownership of academic patents.

  5. Data Basis of data (Banal-Estanol et al., 2010): Engineering Departments: 80 universities with engineering Academic Researchers: Names and Ranks from University calendars and outdated websites using www.archive.org Final dataset: 40 universities, 5172 researchers, 1985-2007 In this work I use reduced sample of 13 universities: Academics: 744 academics, 2001-2007 Patents: All EPO, UKIPO, US patent applications (2001-2008) Funding: PI, sponsor, amount, start and end year (2001-2007) Publications: ISI (2001-2007) Personal Information: PhD Year, PhD Subject (theses.org) Gender, Rank University Characteristics: HE-BCI (2003-2007)

  6. Data Patents: 176 inventors, 467 patents

  7. Firm assigned patents 249 patents (53%) assigned to private firm Owners: 115 companies, size and ownership from company register

  8. Firm assigned patents Scientific Field: PhD information available for 687 researchers

  9. Firm assignees and links to academics Spin-Off Account for 106 patents (43% of industry owned patents)

  10. Firm assignees and links to academics 2. Industry sponsor: 454 researchers are PI, 279 held at least one industry grant, overall 617 grants from 420 different companies

  11. Firm assignees and links to academics

  12. Empirical analysis Bivariate probit of probability to file a patent with the university or a firm. As a researcher has the choice between two (or more) outcomes, their standard errors are not independent and therefore require me to estimate them simultaneously. I employ Maximum Simulated Likelihood Method using the GHK simulator using the user-written command cmp in Stata (Roodman, 2009). Each observation is a patent filing event. There can be more than one observation per researcher and even multiple observation per year per researcher. If a patent has more than one inventor who is an academic in my dataset, I consider the most senior inventor. Q: How can we predict ownership? Patent characteristics are ex-post and may in fact be determined by the patent applicant, directly (claims, family size) or indirectly (citations)

  13. Empirical analysis Propose to predict firm ownership with measures for the different possible explanations of firm ownership. Spin-Off Entrepreneurial culture of a university: Number of newly formed (SPINNEW) and active (SPINTOT) formal start-ups in year t (whether university owned or not). Culture of appropriation: Number of patents filed in t (UNIPAT) and universities cumulative patent portfolio (UNIPATSTOCK) Stock/Share of regional development grants Industry sponsored research Stock/Share of funding from industry Consulting ? University Ownership Stock/Share of funding from public sponsors (research councils / charities) Stock of publications

  14. Variables

  15. Conclusions Descriptive results showed that 28% of firms are university start-ups. Another 27% of firms have sponsored academic research or have other joint agreements to market university inventions. However, 45% of firms do not have any apparent link to researchers that could explain the ownership of university inventions. While the university loses the opportunity of potential profits in the future it is able to secure some financing for on-going research. Though firms sponsoring academic research do not own academic patents, industry funding has a positive effect on industry ownership of patents. Entrepreneurial culture of the university has a positive effect on firm ownership indicating that a university’s IP strategy may be important.

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