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The impact of collaboration diversity and joint experience on the reiteration of university co-patents

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Abstract

Numerous studies have demonstrated the central role of universities in the development of innovation ecosystems, however the literature on the manner in which universities might construct and maintain their R&D collaborations is highly limited. The present study addresses this gap, analyzing the propensity of Italian universities to reiterate co-patenting with other organizations which have been co-applicants of their previous patents. Utilizing multi-level modeling, the study confirms the importance of collaboration diversity in the development of further co-patents, even if its effect changes in accordance with the specific dimension under analysis. Besides, the study demonstrates that joint experience in co-patenting has an inverted U-shaped effect on the development of further co-patents by the same co-applicant organizations. These results suggest the usefulness of a dynamic approach in the analysis of R&D collaborations, which could shed light also to the non-linear and varying impact of cognitive distance on innovation, as highlighted by the previous literature. In general, this study favors a better understanding of value creation and value capture processes in university co-patenting, thus allowing the development of useful policy indications.

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Notes

  1. So called “professor’s privilege” awards patenting rights to the academics, rather than their universities.

  2. A university can also decide to not appear among the patent co-applicants, for example when the cost of patenting is considered higher than the potential economic value of the invention, or when they have stipulated R&D collaboration agreements in a manner that renounces intellectual property rights.

    If other co-applicants are willing to participate in the costs of patenting, this interest would generally communicate the expectation of profits. At this point the university could be induced to jointly file for patent, and then could eventually cede their rights at the point that the economic value becomes clear. This type of behavior is favored under Italian law, which, in the lack of supplementary contracts to the contrary, permits all applicants to sell or concede a license to the co-patent, even without approval of other applicants (AIPPI 2007).

  3. http://cercauniversita.cineca.it/php5/docenti/cerca.php, last accessed October 31, 2017.

  4. PATSTAT contains bibliographical and legal-status patent data, and is maintained by the European Patent Office. The version used was updated in late 2015.

  5. The reduction in number and incidence of co-patents filed by other organizations in 2013 may be related to the fact that the patents filed in that year result from a much lower number of applications compared to previous years. These lower numbers could be due to a delay by PATSTAT in acquiring the relevant data, or due to the fact that the individual applications related to the same patent are processed over a number of years. Given this, it is likely that the number of applications concerning 2013 patents will rise in subsequent updatings of PATSTAT.

  6. This indicator measures the degree of homogeneity existing among the observations pertaining to the clusters identified on the basis of a given level (Snijders and Bosker 2011).

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Acknowledgements

We are really grateful to Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli for his impartial comments and precious suggestions provided on a preliminary version of the paper. We also thank the participants to a seminar held at the University of Leuven, Department of Managerial Economics, Strategy and Innovation, for their comments, as well as the audience and the discussant at DRUID 2017 conference and R&D Management 2017 conference. We are grateful to Giovanni Abramo and Andrea D’Angelo for the access to the Italian academics data. Any remaining errors are likewise the author’s sole responsibility.

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    Gianluca Murgia

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Table 6.

Table 6 Patents filed by the Italian universities from 2001 to 2013
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Murgia, G. The impact of collaboration diversity and joint experience on the reiteration of university co-patents. J Technol Transf 46, 1108–1143 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-018-9664-6

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