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Background

Academic involvement in technology activity: do modes of involvement make a difference? The Flemish case. Julie Callaert, Mariette Du Plessis, Bart Van Looy Research Division INCENTIM – Faculty of Business and Economics ECOOM KU Leuven. Background.

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Background

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  1. Academic involvement in technology activity: do modes of involvement make a difference? The Flemish case. Julie Callaert, Mariette Du Plessis, Bart Van LooyResearch Division INCENTIM – Faculty of Business and EconomicsECOOM KU Leuven

  2. Background • Increased reliance on indicators for mapping and monitoring science-technology interactions in innovation systems • Indicators based on “university-owned” patents (i.e. patents with universities acting as assignees) do not reveal the full picture of university involvement in technology development • Need for identifying patents that are “university-invented” (and not university-owned) • …to grasp a more complete picture of academicpatenting • …to allowfor the assessment of differencesbetweenuniversity-owned and university-invented patents

  3. Background • Sharp increase in academic patenting has raised suspicions / fears about decreasing quality of university patents  relevance of analyzing patent-value of academic patents • Research objective: to study whether modes of involvement in academic patenting matter for patent value • Assessment of differences between university-owned and university-invented patents in terms of : • ‘Originality’ (or: relatedness to a more diverse knowledge base): extent to which the nature of the research underlying the patent is based on prior art in a broad range of fields • ‘Generality’: extent to which the outcome of the research serves as prior art for a broad range of technology fields • ‘Impact’: assessed by forward patent citations

  4. Data & Methodology • Data cover Flemish universities: KU Leuven (KUL), Universiteit Gent (UG), UniversiteitAntwerpen (UA), Universiteit Hasselt (UH) and VrijeUniversiteitBrussel (VUB) • Identification of university-owned patents: • EPO and USPTO granted patents • with at least 1 Flemish university as applicant (< ECOOM sector allocation and name harmonization) • application years 1991-2001 (allowing for time window forward citations)

  5. Data & Methodology • Identification of university-invented patents: • We consider all inventor names on EPO and USPTO granted patents with application years between 1991-2001 • Personnel data files of the Flemish universities for the years 1990-2000. • Matching between personnel surnames and inventor surnames • First visual scan to eliminate certain mismatches • For the withheld potential matches: search contact details of university researcher • Contact researcher to confirm inventorship • Only confirmed matches are retained in the database

  6. Data & Methodology

  7. Data & Methodology • Additional information extracted for all withheld university-owned and university-invented (source) patents (Source: PATSTAT version Autumn 2011): • Technologydomains of source patent (IPC 1 digit) • Applicants and inventors of source patents • Backwardcited and forwardciting patents withrespective IPC3digit codes • Number of cited non-patent references

  8. Data & Methodology • Unit of analysis = patent • Dependent Variables: Indicators related to patent ‘value’: • Impact (number of forward patent citations) as basic quality indicator Forward citation window: 9 years • Originality:extent to which the nature of the research underlying the patent is based on prior art in a broad range of fields calculated as 1- the Herfindahl index of technological classes (3 digit IPC) of all backward cited patents • Generality: extent to which the outcome of the research serves as prior art for a broad range of technology fields. calculated as 1- the Herfindahl index of technological classes (3 digit IPC) of all forward citing patents • Independent variable: University-owned <> University-invented • Control variables: • Application year, • Technological field (IPC1 digit level), • Technological breadth (number of IPC3 digit codes), • Patent system (EPO / USPTO) • Number of backward patent citations • Number of non-patent references

  9. Descriptives

  10. Descriptives Sector-breakdown of university-invented patents: • Sector breakdown of university-owned patents: • 19% is co-owned with a non-profit or governmental institute • 8% is co-owned with a company • 6% is co-owned with an individual

  11. Correlations

  12. Results: Originality (ANCOVA) • No differencebetweenuniversity-owned and university-invented patents • Technologicallybroader patents are more original • Positiverelationbetweennumber of patents cited and originality • Significant technology domain effects

  13. Results: Generality (ANCOVA) • No differencebetweenuniversity-owned and university-invented patents • Highergeneralityfor US patents • Highergeneralityfortechnologicallybroader patents • Slightlyhighergeneralityforolder patents • Slightpositiverelationbetweengenerality and number of forward patent citations

  14. Results: Impact (Neg Binomialregr) • Universityowned patents have higher impact • Higher impact for US patents • Positiverelationbetweenbackward patent citations and impact • Lower impact fortechnologicallybroader patents • Lower impact for patents with more NPRs • Significant technolgical domain differences • Strong interactionbetween patent system and university-owned versus -invented

  15. Results: Impact (Neg Binomialregr) • Higher impact of university-owned patents is significant for EPO patents, notfor USPTO patents

  16. Conclusions • Are academic patents more ‘valuable’ iffirms are involved? Ourfindings do not support this: • No significant difference between university-owned and university-invented patents in terms of “originality” (or rather: diversity in the related knowledge base). • No significant difference between university-owned and university-invented patents in terms of generality. • The impact of university-owned patents is not lower than the impact of university-invented patents. On the contrary even: for EPO patents, university-owned patents receive significantly more citations than university-invented patents. • The volume of university-owned patents has known a large increase over the last decades. Some suspect a decreasing quality. Our findings do not support this (~ no significant decrease of originality / generality / impact of academic patents over time).

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