University licensing revenue is negligible

[Rebecca, Robert, “Universities: The Fallen Angels of Bayh-Dole?” Daedalus 147.4, GDI-JCR]

The overall impact of Bayh-Dole has been a topic of lively debate in the thirty-eight years since its passage.18 University patenting has dramatically increased, and a few universities have made a lot of money from royalties. Yet licensing revenues remain a small portion of university budgets overall. Respondents to a 2015 survey of the Association of University Technology Managers reported $2.5 billion in licensing revenues (including revenues from trademark, copyright, and unpatented technologies). This is less than 4 percent of the $66.6 billion in university research expenditures, with the wealthiest universities capturing most of the benefits. Although university technology transfer professionals take credit for stimulating commercial development of new technologies, it is not clear how much of that development would have occurred without university patents.