Changes to university IPR regulations in Europe and the impact on academic patenting

Abstract

This article develops a general framework to describe the changes in university IPR regulations in Europe and their effects on the patenting activities of universities and on knowledge transfer processes. Understanding the effects of changes in IPR regulations on academic patenting is a complex issue, and parallels with the US case can be misleading. First, despite the general trend towards institutional ownership, university IPR regulations in Europe remain extremely differentiated and there is no one-to-one mapping to the US system. Second, it is difficult to disentangle the

Determinants of national patent ownership by public research organisations and universities

“…Most of these countries are former communist economies and although IPR technical requirements were similar, the individual incentives to patent were much smaller (Marinova 2001). These states have been classified as a block of 'countries where IPR ownership was assigned to the State and which switched to institutional ownership after the early 1990s' (Geuna and Rossi 2011).…”

“…Geuna and Rossi (2011) use similar data to describe changes in university patenting in Europe. In the estimations, we will refer to two samples, the university and the PRO samples, but the unit of observation will be the same -the country-year.…”

The Impact and Effectiveness of Support Measures for Exploiting Intellectual Property

“…University professors and teachers in France held the status of civil servants (Geuna & Rossi, 2011). This gave ownership of their patent rights to their university employers.…”

“…National regulations defining university ownership of IP from research across European countries thus vary widely and in some cases changes in perspectives on university commercialisation were tied to other more general reforms (Geuna & Rossi, 2011). Among the majority of European countries for example, a key issue was to address the status quo in which IP ownership was assigned to the faculty inventor -the professor's privilege -or to firms that funded the researchers, rather than to the universities.…”

“…The transfer to institutional ownership occurred in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway and Finland during the period 2000-2007. However professors' privilege was preserved in Sweden and Italy where it was introduced in 2001 (Geuna & Rossi, 2011).…”