Comparison of university and inventor ownership neutral – limited evidence that it impact development and if it does, it’s specific university dependent

[Lisa & Andrew, “How do patent incentives affect university researchers?,” International Review of Law and Economics Volume 61, Elsevier, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818819302522?via%3Dihub, 7-16-24, GDI – Tom Huynh]

Assigning patents to universities also has an important legal side: who is entitled to ownership of intellectual property? Even though that has not been the focus of this study, as we addressed the individual and university-level, our findings imply that the effect of legislation depends on the execution at university level. On the surface, the difference between university ownership of intellectual property, like in the Bayh-Dole act in the US and similar legislation all over Europe, and inventor ownership by the ‘professor's privilege’ in Sweden (and in the past in Germany, Finland, Norway, and Denmark), seems to be very important. Yet, studies have mixed judgments regarding the effect of these different regimes (; ): some argue that university ownership is more effective in making inventions available for the public (), but most studies find that both systems are at least similarly effective in terms of the number of patents (; ) or that replacing the inventor-ownership with university-ownership even leads to a decrease in patenting and start-up rates (e.g., ; ; ). Short- and long-term effects of such legislation changes may be different, but in the end, the effects may be smaller than predicted as  show in their comparison of Sweden and the US. Our study points at the need to understand the university- and individual-level aspects that play a role. Importantly, in the end in both systems, university managers, technology transfer offices and individual academic inventors jointly impact eventual outcomes in terms of patents and university-based start-ups (see ).