A new industry creation and originality: Insight from the funding sources of university patents

Abstract

Scientific breakthroughs emanating from universities can be a trigger for the emergence of new industries such as in the paradigmatic case of biotechnology. Obviously, not all research conducted in the universities leads to radical departure from the existing technological trajectories. When a patent protection is granted to a discovery, it is possible to construct a proxy for the originality of the discovery based on patent citations. Patent originality has been long recognized in fostering the emergence of new technologies and industries. However, while a large body of literature exists measuring the impact of patent originality on a broad range of measures of firm performance, this paper aims at investigating the conditions driving patent originality. In particular, in providing the first empirical examination of the determinants of patent originality, this paper finds that the research context, as reflected by the funding source for the scientist, influences the extent to which intellectual property protected by a patent is original.Eventually, we propose that university scientists funded by their university, which has a more fundamental mission, have a higher propensity to generate patents that are more original. By contrast, university scientists funded either by industry or other non-university organizations have a lower propensity to generate more original patents.

Prescribing originality: investigating the impact of original knowledge on patent quality in the pharmaceutical sector

“…Of particular interest are the interactions with originality, as they may provide insight into whether universities, established innovators and/or jointly owned patents are better able to leverage knowledge to capitalize on the originality of prior arts in order to innovate a higher-quality patent. Guerzoni et al (2014) find that university owned pharmaceutical patents are more original if the university contributes to the funding source of the research, supporting the notion that there may exist a mediating effect between originality and university ownership.…”

“…It is important to note that the influence of universities on patent quality has become more variable over time, especially in the United States (Henderson et al ., 1998) where the passing of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 made rent seeking by universities a viable revenue strategy (Mowery and Ziedonis, 2002; Sampat et al ., 2003). Guerzoni et al (2014) find that the quality of university owned pharmaceutical patents differed depending on the funding source of the academic researcher, suggesting that rent seeking behavior may be more prevalent in academic pharmaceutical patents.…”

Scientific and Technological Innovation and Cooperation in the Greater Bay Area of China: A Case Study of University Patent Applications and Transformation

“…Meanwhile, faculties are the main drivers of patented inventions in universities and play a significant role in measuring the level of scientific innovation in universities. They all ensure the quality of scientific research products [57,58]. Here, we adopt total number of faculty and scientific research funds to measure these two variables, respectively.…”

Performance of university technology transfer offices: evidence from Europe and Japan

“…Authors, however, point out those tangible measures may be misleading, as they say little about the quality of the patents or fail to comprehensively capture the technology transfer performance of universities, for example, aiming to contribute to societal well-being (Guerzoni et al , 2014). An early but well-known study notes that “patents are flawed measures (of innovative output), particularly since not all new innovations are patented and since patents differ greatly in their economic impact” (Pakes and Griliches, 1980).…”