Scientists’ perspectives concerning the effects of university patenting on the conduct of academic research in the life sciences

This paper explores scientists’ perspectives on the possible “unintended effects” of university patenting on the definition of academic research agendas, and the norms of open science. Based on a survey of life science researchers in Denmark, we found that a substantial proportion of scientists were skeptical about the impact of university patenting. The most skeptical respondents were scientists oriented towards basic research (particularly the less productive ones), recipients of research council grants, scientists with close relations to industry, and full professors. Highly productive scientists were less concerned. Our results have implications for understanding the ultimate success or failure of academic patenting policies, including how increased university patenting may be affecting how scientists conduct academic research.

[1]  M. Trajtenberg,et al.  Universities as a Source of Commercial Technology: A Detailed Analysis of University Patenting, 19651988 , 1995, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[2]  Philippe Aghion,et al.  Of Mice and Academics: Examining the Effect of Openness on Innovation , 2009 .

[3]  Y. Lee.  The Sustainability of University-Industry Research Collaboration: An Empirical Assessment , 2000 .

[4]  D Blumenthal,et al.  Participation of life-science faculty in research relationships with industry. , 1996, The New England journal of medicine.

[5]  E. Mansfield.  Academic Research Underlying Industrial Innovations , 1995 .

[6]  Arvids A. Ziedonis,et al.  The growth of patenting and licensing by U.S. universities: an assessment of the effects of the Bayh–Dole act of 1980 , 2001 .

[7]  Melissa S. Anderson,et al.  Withholding research results in academic life science. Evidence from a national survey of faculty. , 1997, JAMA.

[8]  Michael A. Stoto,et al.  Entrepreneurs in Academe: An Exploration of Behaviors Among Life Scientists , 1989 .

[9]  H. Simon,et al.  Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations , 1978 .

[10]  John P. Walsh,et al.  Special Issue on University Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer: Links and Impacts: The Influence of Public Research on Industrial R&D , 2002, Manag. Sci..

[11]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  The myopia of learning , 1993 .

[12]  David Blumenthal,et al.  Data withholding in academic medicine: characteristics of faculty denied access to research results and biomaterials , 2000 .

[13]  Richard R. Nelson,et al.  Appropriating the Returns from Industrial R&D , 1988 .

[14]  Larry L. Leslie,et al.  Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University , 1997 .

[15]  J. Pierce.  Freedom in research. , 1959, Science.

[16]  J. Metcalfe.  Evolutionary Economics and Creative Destruction , 2002 .

[17]  Rebecca Henderson,et al.  Special Issue on University Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer: Putting Patents in Context: Exploring Knowledge Transfer from MIT , 2002, Manag. Sci..

[18]  H. Etzkowitz,et al.  The Future of the University and the University of the Future: Evolution of Ivory Tower to Entrepreneurial Paradigm , 2000 .

[19]  Bart Verspagen,et al.  University Research, Intellectual Property Rights and European Innovation Systems , 2005 .

[20]  Chiara Franzoni,et al.  Is academic patenting detrimental to high quality research? An empirical analysis of the relationship between scientific careers and patent applications , 2004 .

[21]  Jerry G. Thursby,et al.  Special Issue on University Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer: Who Is Selling the Ivory Tower? Sources of Growth in University Licensing , 2002, Manag. Sci..

[22]  Waverly W. Ding,et al.  The Impact of Academic Patenting on the Rate, Quality and Direction of (Public) Research Output , 2009 .

[23]  L. Leydesdorff,et al.  The dynamics of innovation: from National Systems and , 2000 .

[24]  Kira Fabrizio,et al.  Commercializing the laboratory: Faculty patenting and the open science environment , 2008 .

[25]  R. Nelson.  The Simple Economics of Basic Scientific Research , 1959, Journal of Political Economy.

[26]  Philippe Aghion,et al.  Of Mice and Academics , 2009 .

[27]  P. David,et al.  Toward a new economics of science , 1994 .

[28]  A. Elzinga.  The science-society contract in historical transformation: with special reference to “epistemic drift” , 1997 .

[29]  Waverly W. Ding,et al.  The Determinants of Faculty Patenting Behavior: Demographics or Opportunities? , 2005 .

[30]  H. Etzkowitz.  The norms of entrepreneurial science: cognitive effects of the new university-industry linkages , 1998 .

[31]  Marie C. Thursby,et al.  Objectives, Characteristics and Outcomes of University Licensing: A Survey of Major U.S. Universities , 2001 .

[32]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  Striking the Mother Lode in Science: The Importance of Age, Place, and Time. , 1993 .

[33]  Martin Meyer,et al.  Academic Inventiveness and Entrepreneurship: On the Importance of Start-up Companies in Commercializing Academic Patents , 2006 .

[34]  Michael A. Stoto,et al.  University-industry relationships in the life sciences: Implications for students and post-doctoral fellows☆ , 1987 .

[35]  Marie C. Thursby,et al.  Proofs and Prototypes for Sale: The Licensing of University Inventions , 2001 .

[36]  I. Mitroff.  Norms and Counter-Norms in a Select Group of the Apollo Moon Scientists: A Case Study of the Ambivalence of Scientists , 1974 .

[37]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  WHO'S PATENTING IN THE UNIVERSITY? EVIDENCE FROM THE SURVEY OF DOCTORATE RECIPIENTS , 2007 .

[38]  Margarida Fontes,et al.  Do individual factors matter? A survey of scientists’ patenting in Portuguese public research organisations , 2007, Scientometrics.

[39]  Rosa Grimaldi,et al.  Motivations and Incentives for Patenting within Universities: A Survey of Italian Inventors , 2005 .

[40]  W. Powell,et al.  To Patent or Not: Faculty Decisions and Institutional Success at Technology Transfer , 2001 .

[41]  Irwin Feller,et al.  Universities as engines of R&D-based economic growth: They think they can , 1990 .

[42]  Richard R. Nelson,et al.  Observations on the Post-Bayh-Dole Rise of Patenting at American Universities , 2001 .

[43]  Maryann Feldman,et al.  Academic Entrepreneurs: Organizational Change at the Individual Level , 2008, Organ. Sci..

[44]  L. Zucker,et al.  Star scientists and institutional transformation: patterns of invention and innovation in the formation of the biotechnology industry. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[45]  Y. Lee,et al.  'TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER' AND THE RESEARCH UNIVERSITY : A SEARCH FOR THE BOUNDARIES OF UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY COLLABORATION , 1996 .

[46]  S. Breschi,et al.  THE SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTIVITY OF ACADEMIC INVENTORS: NEW EVIDENCE FROM ITALIAN DATA , 2007 .

[47]  A. Geuna,et al.  University patenting and its effects on academic research: The emerging European evidence , 2006 .

[48]  D. E. Stokes.  Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation , 1997 .

[49]  Devrim Göktepe-Hultén,et al.  Inventing and patenting activities of scientists: in the expectation of money or reputation? , 2010 .

[50]  C. Renault,et al.  Academic Capitalism and University Incentives for Faculty Entrepreneurship , 2006 .

[51]  Scott Shane,et al.  Why do some universities generate more start-ups than others? , 2003 .

[52]  R. Nelson,et al.  The benefits and costs of strong patent protection: a contribution to the current debate , 1998 .

[53]  Teresa A. Sullivan,et al.  Sociology of Science , 1975 .

[54]  P. David.  Can ‘Open Science’ be Protected from the Evolving Regime of IPR Protections? , 2004 .

[55]  M. Heller,et al.  Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research , 1998, Science.

[56]  Dipti Pandya,et al.  How scientists commercialise new knowledge via entrepreneurship , 2008 .

[57]  J. Liebeskind,et al.  Privatizing the Intellectual Commons: Universities and the Commercialization of Biotechnology , 1998 .

[58]  R. Nelson.  The market economy, and the scientific commons , 2004 .

[59]  Koenraad Debackere,et al.  University-industry relationships: How does the Belgian academic community feel about it?☆ , 1990 .

[60]  D Blumenthal,et al.  Industrial support of university research in biotechnology. , 1986, Science.

[61]  Jürgen Mittelstrass,et al.  The Future of the University , 2010, European Review.

[62]  H. Simon,et al.  A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice , 1955 .

[63]  Teresa R. Behrens,et al.  Unintended consequences of cooperative research: impact of industry sponsorship on climate for academic freedom and other graduate student outcome , 2001 .

[64]  T. Allen,et al.  Entrepreneurial orientation, technology transfer and spinoff performance of U.S. universities , 2005 .

[65]  F. M. Andrews,et al.  Autonomy, coordination, and stimulation, in relation to scientific achievement. , 1966, Behavioral science.

[66]  Mike Wright,et al.  Critical junctures in the development of university high-tech spinout companies , 2004 .

[67]  S. Winter,et al.  An evolutionary theory of economic change , 1983 .

[68]  Martin Meyer,et al.  Becoming an entrepreneurial university? A case study of knowledge exchange relationships and faculty attitudes in a medium-sized, research-oriented university , 2008 .

[69]  Scott Shane,et al.  Encouraging university entrepreneurship? The effect of the Bayh-Dole Act on university patenting in the United States , 2004 .

[70]  Philippe Aghion,et al.  Academic Freedom, Private-Sector Focus, and the Process of Innovation , 2005 .

[71]  Li Bennich-Björkman,et al.  Organising Innovative Research: The Inner Life of University Departments , 1997 .

[72]  Magnus Gulbrandsen,et al.  Industry funding and university professors' research performance , 2005 .

[73]  Riccardo Fini,et al.  Factors fostering academics to start up new ventures: an assessment of Italian founders’ incentives , 2009 .

[74]  W. Powell,et al.  The expanding role of university patenting in the life sciences: assessing the importance of experience and connectivity , 2003 .

[75]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[76]  S. Winter,et al.  Appropriating the Returns from Industrial Research and Development , 1987 .