Does Rising R&D Investments Increase the Academic Patent Registration?

Abstract

The aim of the research paper is to study and analyze academic patent registration in four countries of the European Union. In the research paper we identify the importance of academic patents and the action of knowledge-transfer. Moreover, we work with the phrase of academic patent registration rate. The reason of calculating with academic patent registration rate, is to receive the best quality calculations and comparations possible. Due to the fact, that the analyzed countries´ population number is different, we cannot compare academic patent registration number among them. One of the main goals of our research paper is to study, if there can be found a significant connection between the academic patent registration rate and the amount of the national research and development (R&D) investment in the selected countries. R&D expenditure is the percentual rate of money which countries have invested into research and development from their annual gross domestic product (GDP). We study and work with four selected countries of the EU, concretely Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Hungary. It means, we compare two different regions of the EU, northern countries with central EU countries. However, it is extremely important not to forget about the historical and cultural background of the mentioned studied areas, because those factors can highly influence the current behavior even in the mentioned research area. Theoretically, the nationally annually invested amount of money into R&D has a supportive role on the knowledge-transfer process of the country, and also should increase the number of academic registered patents. However, is the mentioned statement true and correct for the analyzed four countries? With our compressional research we realized that rising R&D investments do not have a positive effect on the academic patent registration rate. In three countries out of four, it was correct. However, in Sweden while the R&D expenditure was stagnating, the academic patent registration rate has shown a positive rise. We need to emphasize, that our analyzes do need further continuation of the research. Since we cannot make strong general statements, based on only four countries.