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Harnessing success: Determinants of University Technology Licensing Performance

Harnessing success: Determinants of University Technology Licensing Performance by Sharon Belenzon & Mark Schankerman Comments by Rudi Bekkers, TU Eindhoven About the subject: OECD survey (2003) among TTO’s worldwide shows significant number of unlicenced patents

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Harnessing success: Determinants of University Technology Licensing Performance

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  1. Harnessing success: Determinants of University Technology Licensing Performance by Sharon Belenzon & Mark Schankerman Comments by Rudi Bekkers, TU Eindhoven About the subject: • OECD survey (2003) among TTO’s worldwide shows significant number of unlicenced patents • From any perspective, an unlicenced patent is the least desired outcome. Those patents invoked costs in many different ways: organizational (TTO), out-of-pocket costs, and (possibly!) opportunity costs at the researchers • However, also many patents owned by firms are unused and unlicensed (not only defensive patents)

  2. The aim • Understand licensing performance as a result of incentive structures, organizational/institutional characteristics, etc. • Determine whether other goals such as boosting local/regional economic performance (negatively) influences licensing performance The approach • Focus at (US) TTO’s, dataset of AUTM, original new data (survey), NBER, USPTO (pre-sample) • Only look at TTO aspects • Measure of number of licenses and monetary value of licenses • Determine university (policy) & TTO characteristics (various sources)

  3. The focus Invention Disclosure Patenting decision, Negotiating licenses Incentives Incentives (merit & bonus) Incentives

  4. Incentive scheme in place The results + + Institutional setting (public/private) Licensing performance ns.

  5. My comments The strengths of this paper • Relevant subject, clear and focused approach, convincing findings • Very nice data set (size & quality) and good fit between the data and the research question Two (main) motivations for university patenting and licensing • Generate funds • Improve knowledge transfer Observation: In the paper, it is stated that though the study fits in a wider context, you do not want to get into the question of the desirability of university patenting. However, the title of the paper and the stated objectives for the agency model point towards a positive attitude and towards he the first motivation.

  6. The model does not look at costs • Let’s suppose the main motivation for licensing is to generate funds. • Costs of TTO offices are substantial • If I’m well informed, for many (most?) US universities the costs of the TTO are higher than the actual income they generate. Elsewhere, this might even be worse • It would not be unreasonable to expect that different type of licenses invoke different levels of costs (exclusive vs. non-exclusive, small/large firms, spin-offs, regional/local vs. international). • In your paper, you state this is not a cost-benefit analysis of university patenting (including potential costs of these developments, including threat to established norms of open science and the redire3ction of research away of fundamental science) • So, would it be useful to include at least the direct costs for the licensing activities in the model, instead at looking at revenues only?

  7. How is TTO licensing performance compared to firms? • Recent working paper of Crespi, Geuna & Verspagen (2006) • Differentiates between university-owned patents and university-invented patents • Using the PATVAL database (n=9017, 6 EU countries) • ‘Big news’: While the paper confirms the level of university-owned patents (approx 0.9%), it also makes the university-invented patents visible (3.9%), bringing the total number of university patents to almost 5%. • Studies licensing performance: are there differences between the two categories in the licensing (or use) of these patents (matched pairs analysis). • They conclude that there is no difference (and, according to the authors, no argument to introduce Bayh-Dole Act-like legislation in Europ) In relation to this paper: - How good or bad is the licensing performance of universities compared to firms. - Are universities really as good as firms at licensing? Can they further improve? - How does the level of unlicensed patents at universities compare to that of firms?

  8. Smaller comments • It is generally known that licensing income is highly skewed. One of the top performing universities, Colombia, generates the lion share of its income with only one or two patents. • To what degree might this skewed distribution affect your findings (risk of noise, ‘lottery’), and might it be wise to remove the outliers (or to take a logarithmic measure of licensing income) • Would it be useful to look at other incentives than merit and bonus systems? (career, ...)

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