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Economics of Innovation and New TechnologyVolume 19, Issue 7, October 2010, Pages 627-648

University iprs and knowledge transfer: Is university ownership more efficient?(Article)

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  • aScience and Technology Division, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Washington, DC, United States
  • bDepartment of Economics S. Cognetti de Martiis, University of Torino, Torino, Italy
  • cCollegio Carlo Alberto, Torino, Italy
  • dGrenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble, France
  • eDepartment of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands
  • fDepartment of Economics and UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
  • gCentre for Technology, Innovation and Culture (TIK), University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

Abstract

This paper addresses an issue that has been largely ignored so far in the empirical literature on the role of patents in university-industry knowledge transfer: does it matter who owns the patents on university research? We observe that especially in Europe, many patents in which university researchers are listed as inventors are not owned by the university. From a literature review, we conclude that private ownership of university patents may reduce the efficiency of the knowledge transfer process. This hypothesis is put to an empirical test, using data on patents in six European countries. Specifically, we assesswhetheruniversity-owned patents(inEurope)aremoreoftenapplied,and/ormore economically valuable, than university-invented (but not-owned) patents. Our results indicate that, after correcting for observable patent characteristics, there are only very small differences between university-owned and university-invented patents in terms of their rate of commercialization or economic value. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

Author keywords

European universitiesPublic-private technology transferUniversity patenting

Funding details

  • 1

    The authors are grateful to Ed Steinmueller for comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at workshops, conferences and seminars at the European University Institute, Florence (IT); the Copenhagen Business School (DK); the European Science Open Forum, Munich (DE); Birkbeck College, London (UK); the University of Sussex, Brighton (UK); the European Patent Office, Den Haag (NL); and the Roundtable for Engineering Entrepreneurship Research, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (US). Comments and suggestions from participants at these meetings are much appreciated. The paper has also benefitted from the comments of two anonymous referees. The creation of the PatVal database used in this analysis was supported by the European Commission Pat-Val project. Aldo Geuna acknowledges support from the International Centre for Economic Research (ICER), Torino (IT). The usual disclaimers apply.

  • ISSN: 10438599
  • Source Type: Journal
  • Original language: English
  • DOI: 10.1080/10438590903354984
  • Document Type: Article

  Verspagen, B.; Department of Economics and UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University, Netherlands;
© Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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