Science and Technology Policy I
Do Patents Reflect the Useful Research
Output of Universities?
SPRU Electronic Working Papers Series
Paper No 6 – 1997
Keith Pavitt
João Silva
Ricardo Manso
Summary
• Patents granted to universities give a very partial and
distorted picture of the contribution of university research
to technical change;
• Citations in patents to published research are one of the
most valid contributions of university research to
technical change;
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What is a Patent
• Temporary monopoly on an invention in exchange for the
publication of its details;
• Reconciliation between the interests of inventors, profit
from the invention, with the interests of society, to have
access to the information;
• Exclusive right to the owner to manufacture, market, or
exploit for gain the invention claimed in the patent;
• Prohibits the import of protected products from countries
in which the invention has not yet been patented;
3
Patent Application
• Patents have been mostly awarded to business firms, with
the remaining being granted to individuals, many of
whom turn out to be owners of SME;
• Large firms predominate in science-based sectors, like
chemicals, and electric-electronics. This reflects the
common activities carried out in R&D laboratories;
• SME predominate in non-electrical machinery, measuring
and control instruments. This reflects the skills on design
activities frequently held by SME;
4
Patenting Information
• A source to learn about trends in technical change;
• A means to analyse technical change by its:
– Nature;
– Source;
– Socio-economic effects;
5
Patenting Information
• Advances on IT have vastly reduced the cost of accessing
and manipulating patenting information;
• IT has also facilitated improvements in measurement and
analysis of patent protection processes;
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Effectiveness of Patenting
• European entities value patent protection more than their
US counterparts;
• The effectiveness of patent protection is very similar in
Europe and in the US;
• Patents are considered to be more effective in protecting
product innovations than process innovations in most
sectors;
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Effectiveness of Patenting
Inter-Industry differences in the effectiveness of patent protection
8
Patenting Activity in Universities
• Number of patents attributed to universities is much less
than their share of R&D funding (17% in OECD);
• In 1990 only 5% of total US patents was attributable to
US universities;
• Patenting protection from US universities was mostly in
the fields of chemistry, drugs and medicine (60-65%);
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Patenting Activity in Universities
• Patents reflect the indirect contribution of university
research by underestimating the contribution to practical
applications;
• Universities provide underlying knowledge skills and
techniques that help firms to solve more complex and
demanding problems;
10
Patenting Activity in Universities
• Business firms concentrate on developing and testing
specific innovation and artefacts;
• The small contribution to patenting activity from
universities thus reflect a distrinct role in the process of
technical change;
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Patenting Barriers
• Patenting of university research implies the privatisation
of public knowledge, which is considered to be
economically eneficient;
• Increased emphasis on patenting by universities can
distort or diminish other more useful activities;
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Patent Citations
• To prove their novelty, patent applications must show
their awareness of earlier inventions and discoveries;
• Patents in several domains depend strongly on the
knowledge published in contemporaneous scientific
papers;
• The evidence of inventions building on previous
knowledge usually comes through the form of citations;
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Patent Citations
• Each US patent cites, on average, ten earlier patents, one
science jornal and one other source;
• 73% of the papers cited by US industry patents are public
science, authored at academic, govermental and other
public institutions;
• Analysis of patent citations to research journals can offer
rich insights into the contribution of academic research to
pratical applications;
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Patent Citations
• Patent examiners usually refer what are the most
important citations to which the invention builds;
• Citations have been loaded into databases, thus becoming
a rich source of information and analysis of knowledge;
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Patent Citations
• Citation information can be used both to:
– Understand more deeply the characteristics of the
academic research results cited in patents;
– Compare numbers of patent citations within fields and
amongst institutions;
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Conclusion
• Patenting information should not be used to make
comparisons between fields or institutions;
• Patenting information underestimates the contribution of
university research to practical applications;
• Citations in patents to published papers provide a detailed
picture of the direct contribution of academic research to
technical change;
• Given their relative importance, citations should not be
used to make comparisons amongst fields of academic
science and engineering;
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Conclusion
• Universities provide underlying knowledge skills and
techniques that help firms to solve more complex and
demanding problems;
• Useful published research tends to be publicly funded,
national and high quality;
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Annex I
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Annex II
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Annex III
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Annex IV
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Cheers!
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