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Technology transfer offices and university patenting in Sweden and Germany

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Abstract

This paper analyses the factors that impact on the decision of researchers to patent their research results. Particular emphasis is put on the role of technology transfer offices. It builds on a survey of university professors in Sweden and Germany. The regression results show that researchers that received support from the public infrastructure and researchers that have experience with the patenting system—through own previous patents or joint patent applications with firms—are much more likely to apply for patents.

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Notes

  1. The support infrastructure has changed recently. The TBS were merged and the Innovationsbron (Innovation Bridge) was established. Innovationsbron supports researchers that want to commercialise research results through incubator services and the provision of seed capital. Innovationsbron is owned by the Swedish state (84%) and Industrifonden (16%).

  2. The study includes public actors that are the functional equivalent to TTOs such as the university holding companies in Sweden.

  3. Particularly relevant are OECD (1999, 2002, 2003a, b) and European Commission (2001). For a more detailed review, see Sellenthin (2006).

  4. Knowledge and technology transfer has been a widely debated issue in Sweden, see for instance SOU (1996), VINNOVA (2003), SOU (2005).

  5. A number of studies focus on knowledge and technology transfer in Germany, see for instance Schmoch et al. (2000), Czarnitzki et al. (2000), Beise and Stahl (1999), Cohausz et al. (1998).

  6. Patenting and licensing of university research has been an important topic in the US for quite a long time. Thus, there are a number of studies that are important for the context of this paper, such as Bozeman (2000), Bercovitz et al. (2001), Carlsson and Fridh (2002), Jensen and Thursby (2001), Mowery et al. (2001), Siegel et al. (2003).

  7. The dominating view on commercialisation of university research is that researchers should act like entrepreneurs. Henrekson and Rosenberg (2000, p. 11) claim that the main reason why commercialisation is more successful in USA compared to Sweden is that entrepreneurial culture is more developed in the US. One of their suggestions to increase commercial activity of universities is to change the content of academic courses and the allocation of funding for conducting research towards the demands of private industry.

  8. Holmstrom and Milgrom (1991, 1994) developed the multiple principal-agent theory.

  9. The principal—in our case the university—delegates tasks to an agent—in our case the researcher. Problems arise in such a situation if the principal cannot observe the behaviour and performance of the agent. This measurement problem is the result of asymmetric information between principal and agent and the costs of control. Both factors mean that the agent can exploit the information asymmetries resulting in behaviour that is not fully in accordance with the principal’s objectives.

  10. Please note that we talk about relative pay-offs in this context. Researchers receive usually a fixed wage. But the opportunity costs associated with the three different tasks are likely to be different which can result in different relative wage rates for each of the activities. E.g., researchers who never interacted with industry will have high costs in terms of time and effort needed to accomplish the third mission. In contrast, researchers are used to publish papers, which results in low costs in terms of time and effort. The individual costs associated with the different activities depend pretty much on individual factors, such as experience. The individual productivity of the different tasks has an impact on those individual costs.

  11. For example, VINNOVA (2003, p. 14) shows that at Stanford University about 15% of the research based projects in which resources were invested for patenting and commercialisation (via licenses or start-ups) “produced” benefits that covered the costs. Less than 0.5% resulted in returns larger than 50 million SEK. But one single project generated about 5% of Stanford’s research budget in about 10 years. This means that a limited number of university patents generate the majority of license income.

  12. The chi-square tests applied in this paper test whether the differences between Sweden and Germany are statistically significant.

  13. There are large selection effects in Sweden. In contrast to Germany, where the researchers have to notify the university in the case of an invention, the researchers in Sweden can commercialise on their own. This means the supporting infrastructure in Sweden does not possess information about all patenting and commercialisation efforts.

  14. This is in line with the argument by Gering & Schmoch (2003) that a major reason to seek patent protection for Fraunhofer institutes in Germany is to attract research grants and contracts. Patents are regarded as a signal about the research competence.

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Acknowledgement

Comments from the editor as well as two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Department of Industrial Economics and International Management, Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), L7, 1, 68161, Mannheim, Germany

    Mark O. Sellenthin

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Correspondence to Mark O. Sellenthin.

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Sellenthin, M.O. Technology transfer offices and university patenting in Sweden and Germany. J Technol Transf 34, 603–620 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-009-9108-4

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