A moral economy of patents: case of Finnish research universities' patent policies

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of moral economy for higher education studies through a study of Finnish research universities' patent policies. Patent policies not only stimulate the commercialization of research, they also set norms for behavior and aim to clarify how to distribute rights and responsibilities during the commercialization of research results. My main research finding is that even though institutionalized university patenting is a very recent phenomenon in Finland, policies regulating it have significant similarities to the US case. The main conclusion of this paper is that the question of university patent policies should not be disconnected from broader questions regarding contemporary globalizing knowledge capitalism. Overall, this paper contributes to higher education studies by showing the relevance of the concept of moral economy in studying contemporary university changes and transformations by demonstrating the moral economic nature of patent policies.

Key technology network model for the industrialization of research output: A university patent perspective

“…However, these studies have not clearly distinguished the industrialized (assigned) university patents from the unindustrialized university patents, and have not observed the network distributions of university patents with commercial value. Moreover, although previous scholars have focused on industrialized university patents and explored their influential factors by conducting case studies (Ismail et al, 2011; Kauppinen, 2014; Rasmussen, 2008), such approaches can only explain the situations of certain cases and do not actively identify the key technologies facilitating the overall industrialization trend. Therefore, this present study applied the perspective of a technology network and analyzed the overall view of industrialized university patents to reinforce related theories.…”

“…However, these studies have mainly focused on unindustrialized university patents. Regarding industrialized university patents, case studies have been conducted to explore universities’ performance in industrializing research outputs and to determine relevant limiting factors (Ismail et al, 2011; Kauppinen, 2014; Rasmussen, 2008). However, these studies have not clarified key technologies, namely those truly required by the private sector, that facilitate industrialization.…”

Examining Key Technologies Among Academic Patents Through an Analysis of Standard-Essential Patents

“…Academic patents have become a means of demonstrating that university R&D achievements have industrial applications and can be used to solve social problems (Hsu et al, 2021; van Burg et al, 2021). Therefore, university-owned patents have become a research topic of great interest in many countries (Kauppinen, 2014; Viana et al, 2018), many of which also support the application for academic patents (Coronado et al, 2017; Rasmussen, 2008).…”

The Nomos of the University: Introducing the Professor’s Privilege in 1940s Sweden

“…Shapin 1994; Kohler 1994, 1999; Daston 1995) to highlight normative guidelines and sociocultural practices of scientific work in a certain milieu, or, in some cases (e.g. Kauppinen 2014), more specifically how they relate to activities within or outside academia. Although the notion of moral economies has generated many interesting results in studies of science, it lacks important explanatory affordances in terms of power and hierarchies.…”