Commercializing Academic Research: The Quality of Faculty Patenting

Cédric Schneider, Katrin Hussinger and Dirk Czarnitzki

No 08-069, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: The knowledge produced by academic scientists has been identified as a potential key driver of technological progress. Recent policies in Europe aim at increasing commercially orientated activities in academe. Based on a sample of German scientists across all fields of science we investigate the importance of academic patenting. Our findings suggest that academic involvement in patenting results in greater knowledge externalities, as academic patents appear to generate more forward citations. We also find that in the European context of changing research objectives and funding sources since the mid-90?s, the ?importance? of academic patents declines over time. We show that academic entrants have patents of lower ?quality? than academic incumbents but they did not cause the decline, since the relative importance of patents involving academics with an existing patenting history declined over time as well. Moreover, a preliminary evaluation of the effects of the abolishment of the ?professor privilege? (the German counterpart of the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act) reveals that this legal disposition led to an acceleration of this apparent decline.

Keywords: academic inventors; faculty patenting; patent quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O32 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-sog
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Commercializing academic research: the quality of faculty patenting (2011)
Working Paper: Commercializing Academic Research: The Qaulity of Faculty Patenting (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:7392

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