Van Burg, Professor Amsterdam Business Research Institute, et al., 21

Universities play a critical role in the generation and dissemination of knowledge (; ). Scientific research conducted at universities and knowledge institutes serves as an important input for industrial innovation (; ), and functions as a map for applied research (). A large part of scientific knowledge is tacit, which makes it difficult to be freely transferred across organizations (). Therefore, increasingly academic researchers are involved in the “translation” of basic science, through participating in applied research projects () or coming up with research findings that are of high practical relevance and foster innovation (e.g., ). Both activities may result in the generation of academic patents (referring to patents with at least one university inventor).

To strengthen university-industry links, several initiatives have been taken to spur local economic development based on university research. For instance, science parks have been located nearby research university campuses (), business incubators and public seed capital funds have been established (; ), and bridging institutions are formed that are supposed to link universities to industrial innovation (; ). At the country level, in particular, the passage of the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act of 1980, also known as the ‘Bayh-Dole Act’– providing universities the right to patent and commercialize scientific breakthroughs accomplished with federal funding – has marked an important milestone in the history of university technology transfer, by simplifying and removing many restrictions in the transfer process (; ). Other countries have implemented similar legislation, but with different results (). For instance, in Germany, the ‘professor's privilege’ was abolished, granting the university instead of the inventor the ownership over inventions. This did not lead to an increase in university patents overall, but it did increase university-owned patents ().