Academic Patents Research Articles

Effects of Patent Policy on Outputs and Commercialization of Academic Patents in China: A Spatial Difference-in-Differences Analysis

The development of a difference-in-differences estimator is a new move in patent policy evaluation research. However, such an estimator neglects the possibility that academic patent activities follow a spatial autoregressive process with respect to the dependent variable. The objective of this study was to propose a spatial difference-in-differences estimator accounting for possible spatial spillover effects. In this study, an empirical analysis of a sample of 31 Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2019 indicates that an incentive patent policy has a positive impact on the output and commercialization of academic patents, with positive effects also spilling over into neighboring provinces. This study further found that incentive patent policies play a placebo role in academic patent activities. Provincial patent policies are merely a proxy for other variables that characterize the systemic differences between provinces that implement patent policies and those that do not. Therefore, the promotion of academic patent activities cannot be attributed to policy incentives.

The development trend and academic patent technology network of laser and optical technologies

PurposeThe application of laser and optical technologies in the industry is wide and extensive; the development and application of laser and optical technologies have become a promising research domain. However, most existing studies have focused on the technical aspects or the application aspects; these studies have not highlighted the technology distribution and application development of laser and optical technologies from the big picture. Additionally, the manner in which the research and development (R&D) results of universities correspond to the needs of enterprises and industry has become a topic of concern for the public. Therefore, this study aims to adopt the academic patents as the basis for analysis and to construct a laser and optical technology network.Design/methodology/approachTherefore, in the current study, the researchers have analyzed relevant academic patent technology networks, using academic patents of laser and optical technologies as a basis of analysis.FindingsThe study results indicated that the key technologies mainly lie in nanostructures, metal-working, material analysis and semiconductor devices. Additionally, these technologies are mainly applied in industries, such as optics, medical technology, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and organic fine chemistry; this indicated that a large proportion of academia’s R&D outcomes are applied in these industries.Originality/valueIn this study, the researchers have constructed a technology network model to explore the technical development direction of laser and optical technologies; the results of the current study could serve as a reference for universities and industry for allocation of R&D resources.

Technological structure network analysis to explore the hotspots of academic patents in international technology transfer

Abstract International technology transfer is a determinant of a country’s national revenue and economic growth. Technology exported through international technology transfer can be the factor that gives a country a competitive edge. Therefore, investigation of international technology transfer has become essential. With the role of universities in innovation changing, academic patents have increased significantly over the past 10 years. Thus, this study used academic patents involved in international technology transfer as a basis for analysis and attempted to identify technological hotspots through a technological structure network analysis. The results indicated that key technologies in academic patent–based international technology transfer networks were mainly concentrated on measurement, nanotechnology, medical technology, biotechnology, and electric digital data processing. An academic patent technological hotspot network model was established to serve as a reference for academic technology transfers as well as for governments in their promotion of emerging technologies.

Correcting Life through the Marketplace? Genome Editing and the Commercialization of Academic Research in South Korea

This article follows the scientific and entrepreneurial career of one of the most prominent genetic engineers, Jin-Soo Kim, in order to analyze the fate of a vision of biotechnology in South Korea, in which academy, government, and industry came together to “correct” Korean academic and economic life. I show how the scientific and the economic were intertwined in Kim’s entrepreneurial lives, and so were the public and the private, commerce and law and virtue. As the founder of Toolgen, a biotech company specializing in genome editing, Kim built his career as a pioneer in biotech venture from the late 1990s, at a time when the Korean government tried to find certain opportunities in biotechnology amid the Asian financial crisis. I situate Kim’s early career as a CEO of Toolgen and his return to an academic post at Seoul National University (SNU) within the rise of biotechnology entrepreneurship and the institutionalization of academic patenting in South Korea as an alternative to catch-up industrial and innovation policy that would free the country from the dependence that its own lack of science and technological innovation imposed on it. By 2005, as I show, Kim had emerged as an exemplary entrepreneurial scientist at SNU, a role model for reforming an old, tradition-bound research university into an entrepreneurial university, thereby helping to transform South Korea’s industrial economy into a knowledge economy in an age of globalization. The fate of Toolgen and the scientific career of Kim, however, reflected the emergence of biotechnology entrepreneurship not only of perceived opportunity but of considerable resentments. I will end this paper with a brief discussion of a recent controversy over the ownership of his invention of the CRISPR technology at SNU. His story is thus a vista of the new ideas and sentiments of the 21st century global biotechnology manifested in South Korea.

Academic patents and entrepreneurial intention. To what extent are other knowledge transfer mechanisms affected in a Mexican university?

This research aims to expand the explanations about the debate on academic entrepreneurship and other knowledge transfer mechanisms, to respond to what extent entrepreneurial intention affects the diffusion and dissemination of knowledge in a Mexican university. The lack of indicators of commercial activity, leads us to propose the analysis of a pre-commercial stage of technology that we call entrepreneurial intention. After the literature review, we present a database of academic inventors in patents granted to the university, identifying patenting with an entrepreneurial intention, following Lomas (1993) knowledge transfer taxonomy. Data about publications and received citations by academic inventors is also considered for knowledge diffusion; as well as the supervision of end-of-degree projects in undergraduate and graduate studies; before and after the patent was granted, for knowledge dissemination. Using a binomial model, we estimated two data sets, one for the period 1984-2000 and the second for 2001-2020. Our findings reveal, an average increase of 60% in the number of patents obtained. We also found that the characteristics of the research group are significant in both models, but in the 2001-2020 period it is more important to integrate foreign inventors than patenting with firms, the dissemination of knowledge is more significant and has greater importance in the model. To respond to what extent entrepreneurial intention affects the diffusion and dissemination of knowledge, greater attention should be paid to the diffusion of knowledge since in both models the variable that represents publications after patenting is not significant. The explanation about the dissemination of knowledge improves substantially from one period to another.

Exploring technology opportunities and evolution of IoT-related logistics services with text mining

Many IoT technologies have been applied in the logistics industry in recent years, and they have had a substantial impact on many sectors such as shipping, air freight, warehousing, inventory, etc. Exploring technology opportunities and carrying out technological trend analysis are essential for IoT’s evolution, and there are many techniques or methods for doing so. In this paper, data analysis and text mining techniques, technology opportunity analysis (TOA) and technology-service evolution analysis (TSEA) have been applied to analyze and observe IoT technologies’ and services’ evolution. Academic journals, market reports, and patents have been collected and reviewed on the topic of IoT in the logistics field in this paper. Moreover, by using TOA, technology opportunities have been analyzed to explore IoT-related logistics services. The results of TOA, for example, show that cloud technology is essential to develop smart logistics services, and communication RFID technologies are key to developing information logistics services. Finally, TSEA enables the observation of IoT technology and logistics service evolution by combining unstructured and semi-structured data from text documents. Observing the results of TSEA, the evolution of IoT in logistics is identified, and the results of TSEA also confirm those of TOA using unstructured or semi-structured text data from documents only. The results of this paper are discussed and compared with those of some previous review studies. In summary, the results of this paper provide methodological guidelines on this topic for a comprehensive understanding of IoT-related logistics services.

When do academics patent outside their university? An in-depth case study

A central theme of university entrepreneurship—including the generation and commercialization of university-invented research—is academic patenting (referring to patenting by university scientists). This study explores organizational-, individual- and patent-level factors and their respective relationship with academic patenting. Based on a thorough investigation of all academic patents (that have at least one university scientist involved) from one of the largest Dutch research universities during the period 2000–2009, and further building on first-hand qualitative and quantitative data, the results show that Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) are instrumental in generating more academic patents. However, this effect is predominantly manifested by the increase in the number of patents patented under the name (solely or jointly) of the university (university-owned patents), far more than the increase in the absolute volume of patents invented by the university (university-invented patents). Further, regarding individual academic inventors, our study shows that, in general, male researchers and lead-inventors with higher academic rankings are less likely to abide by the TTOs, resulting in more patents being filed outside the university. Regarding the academic invention, the value of the patent itself does not seem to be related to the choice of the ownership (e.g., university-owned or not) of the patent.

Do company-owned academic patents influence firm performance? Evidence from the Italian industry

We document that firms holding academic patents in their portfolios perform better in terms of market power since they benefit from academic knowledge spillovers generated by academic patents. On the other hand, we detect a negative effect on firms’ short-term profitability imputable to a larger fixed cost associated to the acquisition and exploitation of these patents. In terms of policy, our analysis suggests focusing on company-owned academic patents. A set of economic incentives dedicated to university–industry knowledge transfer through academic patents could support integration between basic and applied research.

Structures and Materials of System-in-Package: A Review

Background: As a new type of advanced packaging and system integration technology, System- in-Package (SiP) can realize the miniaturization and multi-functionalization of electronic products and is listed as an important direction of development by International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Objective: This paper mainly introduces and discusses recent academic research and patents on package structure and packaging materials. Additionally, the trend of development is described. Methods: Firstly, we analyze and summarize the challenges and existing problems in SiP. Then the corresponding solutions are introduced with respect to packaging structure and packaging materials. Finally, the research status of SIP and some patents in these aspects are reviewed. Results: In order to increase the density of internal components, SiP products need to use a stacked structure. The causes of different performance in SiP products are: 1) the stress concentration and bonding quality problems caused by the chip stack structure; 2) the warpage and package thickness problems caused by the package stack; 3) thermal conductivity of materials and thermal mismatch between materials; and 4) dielectric properties and thermomechanical reliability of materials. The following solutions are summarized: 1) structural optimization of chip stacking and packaging stacking; 2) application of new packaging technology; 3) optimization of packaging materials; 4) and improvement of packaging material processing technology. Conclusion: With the study of packaging structure and packaging materials, SiP can meet the requirements of the semiconductor industry and have great future prospects.

Misallocation of scientific credit: the role of hierarchy and preferences. An extension of Lissoniet al.(2013)

AbstractWe extend the results in Lissoni et al. (2013, J. Econ. Behav. Organ., 95, 49–69) on scientific credit misallocation, as measured by misalignment between authorship and inventorship recognition in patent-publication pairs. Extending the analysis to European data, we confirm that, other things being equal, the probability of exclusion of a scientific author from a publication-related patent declines with seniority and increases for women. In addition, we find that the senior scientists’ power to exclude other authors plays a more important role in explaining the patterns of exclusion than differences in authors’ attribution preferences. The unfavorable treatment of young and/or female scientists emerges in particular when patents are owned by companies or individuals, thus providing a warning flag on those institutional arrangements that favor company or individual ownership of academic patents.

Impact of academic patenting on scientific publication quality at the project level

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the relationship between patenting and publishing at the project level. It uses Japan’s Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research database. Japan’s Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research is the major funding source for academic researchers in Japan. This database provides information on inputs (budget, period, project members, etc.) and outputs (publications and patents) from each funded research project. The main finding is that patenting has a curvilinear correlation with higher impact, i.e. the number of higher impact publications from funded research projects increases with the number of patents only to a certain amount, and after a peak, it decreases. Our finding implies that if a finding is a relatively significant and marketable breakthrough, researchers who have the possibility of patenting in mind become less likely to share their results openly. Meanwhile, previous studies implicitly assumed that researchers have to make a choice between basic or applied research projects, or for a particular research project choose to make it more applied or basic. Another finding of this study is that the assumption applies to projects. Our findings imply that a heavy emphasis on patenting may reduce the amount of high-quality publishing of scientific research.

Academic spill-ins or spill-outs? Examining knowledge spillovers of university patents

Abstract In this article, we investigate whether academic technology-based knowledge crosses university boundaries or remains trapped inside the ivory tower. To do so, we rely on a matched sample approach to compare the spillovers generated by academic and firm patents using measures that take into account knowledge spilling-in and knowledge spilling-out of academia. Although it is true that knowledge exchanges among universities may inflate the overall spillovers of university patents vis-à-vis firm patents, our results indicate that university patents generate more spillovers than a comparable sample of matched corporate patents, even when knowledge flows among universities are not regarded as spillovers. This suggests that, in our sample, firm technologies more frequently rely on academic patents than on technologies from other corporations. In addition, we find that the gap between university and industry spillovers differs across industries, with industries where patents are important for appropriating returns from R&D (i.e. more economically valuable), such as drugs, presenting a smaller gap than in industries with complex technologies (where firms have strong incentives to patent aggressively), such as computers. Finally, we show that industry patents generate more spillovers locally and that academic knowledge spillovers are less geographically localized than those of corporate research.

Research Progress on Thermal Conductivity of Graphdiyne Nanoribbons and its Defects: A Review.

Graphdiyne has a unique pi-conjugated structure, perfect pore distribution and adjustable electronic properties of sp2, sp hybrid planar framework. Due to the presence of acetylenic bonds, it has more excellent properties compared to grapheme, such as a unique structure-dependent Dirac cone, abundant carbon bonds and a large bandgap. As one of the important raw materials for nanodevices, it is extremely important to study the thermal properties of graphdiyne nanoribbon. This paper mainly introduces and discusses recent academic research and patents on the preparation methods and thermal conductivity of graphdiyne nanoribbons. Besides, the applications in engineering and vacancy defects in the preparation process of graphdiyne are described. Firstly, taking thermal conductivity as an index, the thermal conductivity of graphdiyne with various vacancy defects is discussed from the aspects of length, defect location and defect type. In addition, the graphdiyne nanoribbons were laterally compared with the thermal conductivity of the graphene nanoribbons. The thermal conductivity of graphdiyne with defects increases with the length and width, which is lower than the intrinsic graphdiyne. The thermal conductivity of the acetylene chain lacking one carbon atom is higher than the one lacking the benzene ring. Typically, the thermal conductivity is larger in armchair than that of zigzag in the same size. Moreover the thermal conductivity of nanoribbons with double vacancy defects is lower than those nanoribbons with single vacancy defects, which can also decrease with the increase of temperature and the number of acetylene chains. The thermal conductivity is not sensitive to shear strain. Due to the unique structure and electronic characteristics, graphdiyne has provoked an extensive research interest in the field of nanoscience. Graphdiyne is considered as one of the most promising materials of next-generation electronic devices.

Triple helix in practice in Indian HEIs using lens of academic patenting

ABSTRACT This paper studies the practice of triple helix phenomena in India using lens of academic patenting. In first part of the paper, using citation counts of patents assigned to Indian HEIs and BSE Sensex constituents by USPTO, we bring out the necessity of continuous collaboration between HEIs, industry and government for creating valuable intellectual property. In second part, we measured the association of external structural changes (awareness of support from Triple helix constituents) and internal individual level changes on readiness to patent among faculty members in HEIs. Results indicated that structural changes and individual level changes influence readiness to patent. Awareness of support from HEIs and government, being open to adapt to change and wanting to have opportunity to help others through research had a significant positive relationship on faculty wanting to disclose their inventions.

My Journey to Open Science

My Journey to Open Science

Academic contribution to industrial innovation by funding type

Universities are an important actor for innovation. Their contributions to technological and scientific knowledge development have been supported by various types of funding. The current study investigates the impacts of two academic research funding sources—industry and competitive—on academic patents. We measure the effects with two indicators—creation of progenitor inventions and the degree of diffusion. Using a patent database, this paper identifies a progenitor invention if a patent is granted without any backward citations and measures the degree of diffusion with patent citations. Focusing on Japanese university patents, the main finding of this paper is that competitive funding tends to produce progenitor inventions whereas industry funding is not likely to do so. By contrast, inventions produced from competitive funding are not likely to diffuse, whereas those produced from industry funding are likely to diffuse. Based on our findings, we argue that the competitive funding may work better when diffusion mechanism is introduced. An example is to increase academic researchers’ proximity to the industry. Additionally, our findings also imply that when setting new funding or changing academic funding system such as replacing block funding with other types, it is important to understand what kind of outcomes are expected from the funding method.

Public funds and outputs in higher academic technical institutions: insights from India

ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of public funding and its lag structure on research outputs in higher academic technical institutions of India. It contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the determinants of academic publications and patents in the developing country context. We use panel data of actual yearly expenditure of 54 comparable scientific departments of the Indian Institutes of Technology from 2009–2010 to 2013–2014. The results highlight the need for increased funding for operational activities of the institutes as it is positively associated with publication and patent intensity.

The impact of the abolishment of the professor’s privilege on European university-owned patents

ABSTRACT Intellectual property regimes governing university inventions were quite diverse in Europe at the end of the 1990s. Several European countries maintained the so-called professor’s privilege, an exception to employment law whereby university researchers were allowed to retain the ownership of academic inventions. The 2000s were characterised by convergence towards a more homogeneous system, in which university administrations took control of IP management. We investigate the impact of the reform and we observe a decline in the technological importance and the value of the patents owned and managed by universities in the countries abolishing the professor’s privilege. On the contrary, by differentiating the academic patents by type of ownership, we find that the technological importance of academic patents owned by companies has instead increased. Our study produces some new results that may alert policymakers to the possible unintended consequences of the university ownership model.

Token-Curated Registry with Citation Graph

In this study, we aim to incorporate the expertise of anonymous curators into a token-curated registry (TCR), a decentralized recommender system for collecting a list of high-quality content. This registry is important, because previous studies on TCRs have not specifically focused on technical content, such as academic papers and patents, whose effective curation requires expertise in relevant fields. To measure expertise, curation in our model focuses on both the content and its citation relationships, for which curator assignment uses the Personalized PageRank (PPR) algorithm while reward computation uses a multi-task peer-prediction mechanism. Our proposed CitedTCR bridges the literature on network-based and token-based recommender systems and contributes to the autonomous development of an evolving citation graph for high-quality content. Moreover, we experimentally confirm the incentive for registration and curation in CitedTCR using the simplification of a one-to-one correspondence between users and content (nodes).

Portfolio Evaluation of Academic Patent: A Proposal to Brazil

In the current context of scarce financial resources, technology transfer offices are pressured to find ways to increase revenues through technology transfers or reduce expenses with their portfolio of technologies, especially patents. The Patent assessment seeks to detect the market potential of patents for transfer through licensing, abandonment, or maintenance. In this context, the objective of this study is to validate the leading indicators used in the patent evaluation to develop a framework for evaluating academic patent portfolio in the Brazilian context. For this, we used mapping and analysis methods of the current models besides focus group consultations, exploratory factorial analysis, and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to validate the indicators. The results show that seven factors are determinant in the evaluation of academic patents, having positive implications for the management of Intellectual Property since technology transfer decision-makers can use the factors and their identified weights as value indicators to evaluate patents with the most significant market potential.