EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Do individual factors matter? A survey of scientists’ patenting in Portuguese public research organisations

Paula Susana Figueiredo Moutinho (), Margarida Fontes and Manuel Godinho ()
Additional contact information
Paula Susana Figueiredo Moutinho: Instituto Superior da Maia
Margarida Fontes: Instituto Nacional de Engenharia e Tecnologia Industrial

Scientometrics, 2007, vol. 70, issue 2, No 8, 355-377

Abstract: Abstract This paper addresses scientists’ behaviour regarding the patenting of knowledge produced in universities and other public sector research organisations (PSROs). Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in patenting and licensing activities by PSROs. We argue that the whole process depends to a certain extent on scientists’ willingness to disclose their inventions. Given this assumption, we conduct research into individual behaviour in order to understand scientists’ views concerning the patenting of their research results. Data from a questionnaire survey of Portuguese researchers from nine PSROs in life sciences and biotechnology is presented and analysed and complemented with in-depth interviews. The results reveal that overall the scientists surveyed show a low propensity to become involved in patenting and licensing activities, despite the fact that the majority had no “ethical” objections to the disclosure of their inventions and the commercial exploitation of these. Perceptions about the impacts of these activities on certain fundamental aspects of knowledge production and dissemination are however divergent. This may account for the low participation levels. Furthermore, most scientists perceived the personal benefits deriving from this type of activity to be low. Similarly, the majority also believed that there are many difficulties associated with the patenting process and that they receive limited support from their organisations, which lack the proper competences and structures to assist with patenting and licensing.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-007-0207-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:scient:v:70:y:2007:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-007-0207-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-007-0207-4

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:70:y:2007:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-007-0207-4