Not Invented Here: Technology Licensing, Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Based on Public Research
Using a new dataset encompassing more than 2,200 inventions made by Max Planck Society researchers from 1980 to 2004, we explore the way in which inventor, technology, and licensee characteristics affect the commercialization of academic inventions. We fi
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Abstract Using a new dataset encompassing more than 2,200 inventions made by Max Planck Society researchers from 1980 to 2004, we explore the way in which inventor, technology, and licensee characteristics affect the commercialization of academic inventions. We find limited evidence suggesting that domestic and external licensees outperform foreign licensees and inventor spin-offs in the commercialization of academic inventions. Controlling for selection, spin-offs are indistinguishable from external licensees. Patented technologies and inventions by senior scientists are more likely to be licensed, but patent protection is related to lower commercialization odds and royalty payments.
1 Introduction Throughout the developed world, public attention and policy initiatives increasingly focus on the transfer of knowledge from public research to the private sector. Following the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 in the U.S. and subsequent legislative changes elsewhere, technology transfer has generally been accepted as a primary objective of universities and other public research organizations (cf. Mowery et al. 2001; Phan and Siegel 2006; Verspagen 2006). Notwithstanding the importance of alternative transfer channels (Cohen et al. 2002), commercialization of scientific results based on patents, licensing, and spin-off entrepreneurship has found particularly intensive policy attention as well as scholarly scrutiny (e.g., Reprinted from Journal of Evolutionary Economics 22(3), 481–511, Springer (2012). G. Buenstorf (*) Institute of Economics and INCHER-Kassel (International Center for Higher Education Research), University of Kassel, Nora-Platiel-Strasse 5, 34109 Kassel, Germany e-mail: [email protected] M. Geissler Institute of Economics, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany e-mail: [email protected] G. Buenstorf et al. (eds.), The Two Sides of Innovation, Economic Complexity and Evolution, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-01496-8_5, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013
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Shane 2002; Lowe and Ziedonis 2006; Elfenbein 2007). Yet in spite of the increased emphasis on universities’ intellectual property rights (IPRs) and IPR-based commercialization, little is known about the underlying processes of knowledge transfer. Commercializing academic inventions is non-trivial because they are often far from being readily marketable. Prior work suggests that commercialization is complicated by uncertainty stemming from the early-stage character of most university inventions (Jensen and Thursby 2001), information asymmetry between inventor and potential licensee (Shane 2002), and also the non-codified nature of important elements of the knowledge base underlying the traded technology (Agrawal 2006). We lack conclusive evidence on how the challenges posed by these traits of academic inventions are related to inventor, technology, and licensee characteristics. For example, the relative commercialization performance of inventor spin-offs vis-a`-vis external licensees is a contested issue (Sh
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