Understanding the roles and involvement of technology transfer offices in the commercialization of university research

Anders Brantnell and Enrico Baraldi

Technovation, 2022, vol. 115, issue C

Abstract: Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) can play important roles in university-based innovation processes, for example, by handling patenting issues and providing advice about funding. This study explores how patentability and ownership of academic inventions are connected to the roles and involvement of TTOs in commercialization of medical inventions. This in-depth exploration of four invention cases from two universities found that the number of TTO roles is related to patentability (i.e., patentable inventions entail more TTO roles than non-patentable inventions), that the types of TTO roles are related to ownership (i.e., university-owned inventions entail more common roles than inventor-owned inventions), and TTO involvement in an innovation process is more related to patentability than to ownership (i.e., non-patentable inventions entail higher involvement than patentable inventions). We map the roles and divide them into two categories: intellectual property (IP) sheltering and intellectual property (IP) pushing. These categories align with previous understandings concerning TTO roles and contribute to theoretical and conceptual clarity. IP pushing is related more to inventor ownership than IP sheltering and IP sheltering is related more to university ownership than IP pushing.

Keywords: Commercialization of science; Technology transfer office; Invention ownership; Patent; Involvement; Case study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497222000724
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:techno:v:115:y:2022:i:c:s0166497222000724

DOI: 10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102525

Access Statistics for this article

Technovation is currently edited by Jonathan Linton

More articles in Technovation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().