Science Is Golden: Academic R&D and University Patents

Many studies have shown indirect effects of academic research by linking academic research to firm patents. However, since the Bayh-Dole Act, universities are allowed to patent inventions that were funded by federal money and to retain the royalties that these patents generate. As a consequence, universities now are interested in protecting their profitable discoveries, just like any commercial firm doing R&D. In this paper, we apply the econometric techniques traditionally used to estimate the patent production function of firms to data on the patents of American universities. We find that more money spent on academic research leads to more university patents, with elasticities that are similar to those found for commercial firms. In addition, we provide estimates of the effect of establishing a Technology Transfer Office on a university's patent output.     

Universities and Patent Demands

Research universities have made enormous contributions to the field of medicine and the treatment of human disease. Alone or in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, academic researchers have added to the store of knowledge that has led to numerous life science breakthroughs. A new chapter may be opening for academic researchers, however, that could lead to a darker tale. ‘The mouse that trolled: the long and tortuous history of a gene mutation patent that became an expensive impediment to Alzheimer''s research, by Bubela et al., chronicles one such tale.’ The authors do an excellent job of bringing to life the twisting saga that engulfed numerous academic and non-profit Alzheimer''s researchers over many years. The authors note that the story is an outlier, but sadly, that may not be the case. There are increasing signs that academic researchers and their institutions are being caught up in the rush for gold that is accompanying the proliferation of the non-practicing entity business model. As I have noted before, academic institutions have a dual role, as keepers of the academic flame and guardians of the public monies entrusted to them through state and federal research funding. The specter of taxpayer money being used, not to advance research and for the betterment of society, but as part of schemes to extract money from productive companies may not sit well with voters, and ultimately, with legislators. In that case, researchers and institutions themselves may have much to lose.‘The Mouse that Trolled: The Long and Tortuous History of A Gene Mutation Patent That Became an Expensive Impediment to Alzheimer''s Research’ describes an important case in which a gene mutation patent, owned by a non-practicing entity, was asserted against researchers studying the causes and effects of Alzheimer''s disease. Non-practicing entities (NPEs) are parties whose core activity involves licensing or litigating patents, rather than making products. The article details nearly two decades of litigation—targeted at universities, foundations, and non-profits—and illustrates the immeasurable damage to disease research caused by the battle. Although the authors examine a single example of an NPE targeting biopharmaceutical research, observational evidence suggests that such cases will be neither rare nor uncommon across time, raising concerns about the way in which the public interest may be lost along the way. Particularly troubling is the possibility that universities themselves may increasingly partner with NPEs, in an effort to join the patent gold rush.Universities play a dual role in society, serving both as keepers of the academic flame and as guardians of society''s money. State and federal governments entrust universities with substantial amounts of research funding in the hope that academic minds can contribute to the store of knowledge that will lead to societal improvements in human health, technology, and other fields. And universities have, indeed, made profound contributions to knowledge and innovation, from which all of society has benefitted. In fact, in an effort to facilitate the translation of academic research into products for society, Congress adopted the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act.¹ Prior to Bayh-Dole, commentators had complained that the ‘return on investment’ from public research funding for universities failed to justify the dollars spent.² Bayh-Dole attempted to rectify that problem by allowing universities to control patenting and licensing of inventions created with federal money.³ The goal was to facilitate the creation of actual products from the storehouse of knowledge resulting from public funding of university research. In keeping with the idea that universities are trustees of public resources, Bayh-Dole created an environment in which universities would foster innovation through the commercial application of its patents.Bayh-Dole flowed from the basic principle that patents are granted, not solely to reward the inventor, but rather to incentivize activity that benefits society as a whole.⁴ In granting patents, we temporarily remove items from the store of what would otherwise be free to all and reserved to none in the hopes that this will redound to the benefit of society at large.⁵ Thus, patents are not the natural right of an inventor, but rather are rights created by the sovereign in the United States for limited societal purposes.⁶The federal government itself recently explored this concept in arguments before the Federal Circuit—the appeals court that hears cases related to patents—in Astornet Technologies Inc. v. BAE Systems, Inc. In Astornet, the patent holder claimed that three government contractors had violated its patent with their equipment to authenticate boarding passes at airports.⁷ The court dismissed the claims under 28 U.S.C. §1498, which stipulates that when the government uses a patented invention, any patent infringement action must be taken against the United States and not the individuals of companies with whom it contracts.⁸The government''s amicus curiae noted that the US does not ‘infringe’ when it uses a patented invention without authorization, and commentators have pointed out that according to this characterization, one must never think of the US as an ‘infringer,’ but rather as a sovereign that has simply chosen to offer compensation.⁹ According to the brief, the court cannot interpret the U.S. government''s actions as patent infringement. Rather, 28 U.S.C. §1498 stipulates that the only remedy for damages caused by the government''s use of a patent is just compensation after a complaint has been raised in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. In other words, the government can always use a patent without permission, as long as it provides compensation at a later date if and only if a court rules in favor of a complaint raised by a patent grantee. Therefore, the government may force compulsory licensing and is never actually a patent infringer. This is not to say that the patent grantee has no remedy against the government. Rather, 28 U.S.C. §1498 waives sovereign immunity and establishes the process by which an inventor can claim royalties. At the end of the day, however, the government''s brief reminds us that patents are not granted for inventors to aggrandize their wealth but rather in the interest of society as represented by the sovereign.Bayh-Dole, of course, is a manifestation of this principle. Having entrusted universities with public funds for research, the sovereign then gives universities the right to patent and license the fruits of that research. The intent is not to further fill the university''s coffers with more money but to fill society''s coffers with new products. In other words, under Bayh-Dole, universities are given control over the licensing system specifically to foster the creation of new commercial products for the benefit of society. NPEs, however, muddy the waters.NPEs are individuals or businesses whose core activity involves licensing or litigating patents, rather than making products. NPEs make no products of their own but generate a return by asserting patents against companies that make products.¹⁰ Over the last few years, at least half of all the patent infringement suits filed in the United States have been filed by NPEs.¹¹ Often referred to as patent trolls, many scholars and commentators have argued that NPEs simply create a tax on production—the production of companies already making products. Although one could conceivably argue that they play some role in the innovation system,¹² whatever role they play, NPEs certainly do not make new products. They also do not appear to connect inventors with others who make new products out of their inventions.¹³Traditionally, universities have avoided engaging in widespread patent litigation. For example, a study of 15,000 patent lawsuits filed across four years in the United States found that NPEs filed a majority of those suits.¹⁴ Universities accounted for only one half of one percent of all first-named plaintiffs, making them almost invisible in the dataset.¹⁵Universities have also traditionally avoided partnering with NPEs. In fact, the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) released a public interest statement on ethical technology transfer principles in 2007, which universities could sign. The statement is advisory, not mandatory—setting out guidelines for best practices, rather than requirements. For those universities that signed the statement, the code specified that universities should not operate under a business model that is predicated on infringement litigation rather than commercialization to create products. AUTM, which includes some members who are already licensing technology to NPEs, has decided to reexamine the code.¹⁶ Even if AUTM upholds its original statement, however, it is possible that universities increasingly will license technology to the highest bidder, regardless of whether any new commercial products will result.Money is tempting, and the lure for universities to monetize their patents is becoming irresistible. For example, Intellectual Ventures, one of the largest patent holding companies in the United States and a notorious NPE, claims that it has handled patent licensing for 60 American universities but acknowledges that only two of which (Duke and Caltech) have led to commercial products.¹⁷ Notably, both Duke and Caltech had signed the 2007 AUTM Statement opposing transferring patents to NPEs.¹⁸ In addition, press reports have identified examples of patents funded by federal programs that have been transferred to NPEs.¹⁹ Faced with the incentive to profit from research, at least some universities appear to be shifting away from the policy of avoiding NPEs. As the practice spreads, there is a significant risk that more and more universities will be rushing into the waiting arms of NPEs. In this case, universities may end up fueling the type of litigation that hindered Alzheimer''s researchers, as chronicled in ‘The Mouse that Trolled’.Moreover, these new university commercialization methods may have particularly serious consequences for the life science industry. Many people wrongly believe that biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industry are immune to NPE litigation. However, a study of the patent holdings in the fiscal year 2011 of five universities (the University of California system, MIT, the University of Texas system, Caltech, and the University of South Florida) identified numerous patents that could be deployed with the same techniques that patent trolls have used in the technology sector. These included patents on active ingredients of existing drugs, methods of treatment, screening methods to identify new drugs, manufacturing methods, dosage forms, as well as related technologies.²⁰If universities continue to move toward interactions with NPEs, such portfolios will provide tempting morsels to feed the patent trolling appetite, and could help drive patent trolling more toward the life sciences, a result that cannot be good for life science innovation. It would be troubling if taxpayer money that flows to universities ends up fueling patent trolling, rather than encouraging the creation of new products. In that case, the implicit agreement between the public and the research it funds would be disrupted.‘The Mouse that Trolled: The Long and Tortuous History of A Gene Mutation Patent That Became an Expensive Impediment to Alzheimer''s Research’ tells the cautionary tale of the ways in which NPEs, through patent assertion, hinder progress that affects the public. It is clear, however, that there will be similar examples in the future. The authors’ tale not only casts doubt on the NPE model; it should also make us think deeply about the role that the public expects universities to play in society. The public interest requires that universities act responsibly with public funding and remain dedicated to society''s benefit. University patent monetization via NPEs both fails the spirit of Bayh-Dole and damages the public''s trust.     

The contributions of invention management companies to technology transfer

A new type of organization which is explicitly dedicated to technology transfer has emerged in the United States: Companies which manage inventions produced by universities, independent inventors and other creative groups. This paper shows that these “Invention Management Companies” (IMCs) make important and unique contributions to technology transfer on legal issues (e.g., guarding against patent infringements), marketing (e.g., convincing a company to commercialize au invention) and advocating the invention against the organized opposition of established technologies. Given the contributions of IMCs to an emerging system for encouraging innovation (an “Inventive Society”), the paper recommends broadening the role of IMCs as information providers and linking them to incubators and venture capital companies.     

Measurement of R&;D Multipliers: The Case of Greece

The present paper applies empirically the methodology of backward and forward R & D multipliers for the case of Greece, which, despite its high growth rates in output (G.D.P.), ranks last among European Union (E.U) countries in R&D expenditure. The backward R&D multipliers measure the total amount of R&D expenditure embodied in one unit of an industrys final demand. On the other hand, forward multipliers reflect the percentage of an industrys R&D expenditures that is embodied in the final output categories. The results show that the Greek economy experiences a decrease in backward R&D multipliers over the time period 1993–1997, and some policy implications are discussed, regarding the countrys priority to increase R&D diffusion and stimulate R&D financing.     

University–Industry collaboration in the biopharmaceuticals: the Italian case

We investigate the determinants of University–Industry (U–I) interactions in the biopharmaceuticals in Italy over the period 2004–2010, choosing co-publishing as a proxy of U–I partnerships. We construct a novel dataset of co-published articles, that contains measures of proximities, agglomeration, firms’ and universities’ characteristics. Following a consolidated methodology, we integrate our dataset of effective interactions with the set of all potential interactions, to estimate probabilistic models for the occurrence and the intensity of U–I interactions. Our main findings confirm and extend the predictions of the previous literature: (1) geographical proximity and prior partnership increase the probability and the intensity of co-publication; (2) the proximity of a firm to other biopharmaceutical firms and universities attenuates the relevance of geographical proximity; (3) there exists complementarity between prior partnerships and geographical proximity. A novel result is that firms’ and Universities’ size, firms’ R&D and patents expenditure and the composition of the academic staff as well as quality of academic research exert a significant impact on the intensity of co-publishing.     

The survey of industrial R&;D—patent database link project

This article details the construction of a firm-year panel dataset combining the NBER patent dataset with the Survey of Industrial R&D conducted by the Census Bureau and National Science Foundation. The dataset constitutes a platform that offers an unprecedented view of the R&D-to-patenting innovation process and a close analysis of the strengths and limitations of the R&D survey. The files are linked through a name-matching algorithm customized for uniting the firm names to which patents are assigned with the firm names in the Census Bureau’s SSEL business registry. Through the Census Bureau’s file structure, R&D can be linked to the operating performances of each firm’s establishments, further facilitating innovation-to-productivity studies.

Technology-transfer strategies of DOE's conservation programs

This paper examines the process by which R&D results funded by the Office of Conservation and Renewable Energy (CE) of the US Department of Energy (DOE) have generated commercial applications. It looks at examples of technology-transfer procedures and activitees across three of CE's component offices that correspond to the major energy end-use sectors: transportation, buildings, and industry. On the surface, the conservation programs would appear to have little strategic consistency and, therefore, lack the clear leadership many seek in a technology-transfer program. However, as an alternative to strategic consistency, one may tailor the technology-transfer approach of each program to its unique circumstances. This paper presents case studies of such tailoring, in which the diversity of approaches mirrors the complexity of the energy end-use markets and the private-public interests that must be negotiated to successfully commercialize energy-saving innovations. The paper discusses the lessons learned about the conditions requiring adaptive design and the structures and practices that have been proven effective.     

‘Tesco for Terrorists’ Reconsidered: Arms and Conflict Dynamics in Libya and in the Sahara-Sahel Region

How does arms availability affect armed conflict? What implications does increased arms availability have for the organisation of armed groups involved in war against the state? This article explores these questions by looking into the civil war in Libya and the subsequent proliferation of weapons in the broader Sahel/North Africa region. Its argument is based on secondary sources: online databases, international organisations reports and news media. First, we examine the question of firearms in Libya in order to understand how changing conditions of weapons availability affected the formation of armed groups during different phases of war hostilities (February–October 2011). We highlight that, as weapons became more readily available to fighters in the field during this period, a process of fragmentation occurred, hindering efforts to build mechanisms that would allow control of the direction of the revolutionary armed movement. Next, as security continued to be a primary challenge in the new Libya, we consider the way in which unaccountable firearms and light weapons have affected the post-war landscape in the period from October 2011 to the end of 2013. Finally, we put the regional and international dimensions under scrutiny, and consider how the proliferation of weapons to nearby insurgencies and armed groups has raised major concern among Libya’s neighbours. Short of establishing any causal relationship stricto sensu, we underscore the ways in which weapons from Libya have rekindled or altered local conflicts, creating permissive conditions for new tactical options, and accelerating splintering processes within armed movements in the Sahara-Sahel region.     

Does strong patent protection facilitate international technology transfer? Some evidence from licensing contracts of Japanese firms

This paper examines how patent protection in a technology recipient country affects international technology transfer. A theory suggests that the effect of stronger patent protection on technology transfer is negative if the binding constraint is the imitation profitability and positive if it is the incentive for the licensor to undertake technology transfer. We evaluate these implications by examining the variations of the structure of licensing contracts across countries, based on a newly collected database of licensing contracts by Japanese firms. Our major findings are the following. First, the incidence of know-how licensing, either in the pure or in the bundled form, relative to that of pure patent licensing, declines significantly with the level of foreign patent protection. This indicates a limited role of patents for facilitating know-how licensing. Secondly, the probability and the strength of ownership control by a licensor declines with the level of patent protection, indicating a positive effect of stronger patent protection in expanding the scope of the recipients of technology transfer.

Counterterrorism and Radical Eco-Groups: A Context for Exploring the Series Hazard Model

Objective

This study examines whether radical eco-groups have been deterred by legal sanctions. From a rational choice framework, I argue that members of these groups weigh costs and benefits. I measure an increase in costs, or an objective deterrence effect, through four federal sentencing acts targeted at reducing the criminal behavior of these groups [the tree-spiking clause of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act (ADA), the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA), the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)] and hypothesize that this legislation decreased the hazard of subsequent attacks.

Methods

This research is a quasi-experimental design utilizing the 1,068 illegal incidents perpetrated in the name of the environment, animal, or both as extracted from the Eco-Incidents Database. Using series hazard modeling, I examine the time until the next incident, serious incident, and ideologically specific incident in relation to dummy variables operationalizing the enactment dates of the above legislation.

Results

All in all, the results are somewhat consistent with a rational choice framework and my hypotheses. The ADA decreased the hazard of another attack (11 %) and environment-only attack (15 %), while at the same time increasing the hazard of a terrorist, damage, and animal-related attack. AETA decreased the hazard of all (47 %), damage (42 %), and the behavior it was aimed at, that of animal-only incidents (52 %). However, neither the AEPA, nor AEDPA had a significant effect on any of the outcomes.

Conclusions

Overall, radical eco-groups were deterred by legal sanctions, but these findings are legislation and outcome specific in addition to including displacement effects.     

高校职务科技成果混合所有制的困境与出路

高校职务科技成果混合所有制,是我国赋予科研人员科技成果所有权,促进科技成果转化的重要探索。但是,现行方案不仅违反上位法关于职务科技成果权属的规定,而且对产权混合所有的固有缺陷也缺乏应对方案。高校职务科技成果权利配置应当以利益平衡为核心,以促进科技成果转化为导向。我国应当在扩大解释高校职务科技成果处置权的基础上,赋予当事人权属自治的自由;同时完善高校职务科技成果混合所有权的行使规则与权责体系,以解决当事人契约不完备的问题。     

The economics of collective knowledge and technological communication

Technological knowledge can be understood as a collective good when it is the outcome of the integration between internal to the firm investments in R&D and learning and the absorption of competencies and technologies provided by external organizations (such as, other firms, universities, R&D centers). Technological communication is a crucial strategy in such dynamic interaction between the firm and the system. Only under effective conditions of technological communication the private and social benefits derived from the exploitation of spillovers are higher than the private losses due to partial inappropriability. The article presents a simple microeconomic framework to understand knowledge production and distribution, integrating the effects and conditions of technological communication within a knowledge production function. The interaction between internal investments in R&D and learning, partial inappropriability, the conditions for the access to external knowledge and the exploitation of spillovers explains increasing returns in the production of knowledge.

Assuring space shuttle orbiter subcontractor compliance with the NASA new technology clause

NASA's Charter demands that innovations arising from the agency's work receive the widest possible dissemination to bring about a transfer of the technology to the public welfare. This Spinoff from the Space Program is now a predictable event because of analyses done over the years by NASA and economists. However, the initial identification of innovations must be done through disclosures from NASA, prime contractor and subtier contractor employee innovators. Although NASA provides innovators with nominal cash awards for published innovations and inventions, a problem exists for NASA in assuring that all valuable innovations and inventions get promptly identified, reported and disseminated. This paper describes the technique developed by NASA's prime contractor for Shuttle Orbiter (Rockwell Space Division), which has successfully captured over 1200 innovations for NASA-JSC. Aspects of the Program described include the contract requirements, motivational techniques, results, problems, and a discussion of the results. An order of magnitude increase in innovation reporting resulted from Rockwell's activities primarily accomplished using an inexpensive four-step process implemented at about 200 subcontractor's facilities.     

Geographic and technological R&;D spillovers within the triad: micro evidence from US patents

This paper aims at assessing the magnitude of R&D spillover effects on large international R&D companies’ productivity growth. In particular, we investigate the extent to which R&D spillover effects are intensified by both geographic and technological proximities between spillover generating and receiving firms. We also control for the firm’s ability to identify, assimilate and absorb the external knowledge stock. The results estimated by means of panel data econometric methods (system GMM) indicate a positive and significant impact of both types of R&D spillovers and of absorptive capacity on productivity performance.

Attitudinal characteristics of males who have engaged in spouse abuse

Several of the attitudinal characteristics which are frequently attributed to abusive males were investigated in this study. Samples of male military personnel who had engaged in at least one serious episode of interspousal violence in the previous 6 months were administered measures of the following variables: (1) Attitudes toward self — The Coopersmith Self-The Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory; (2) Attitudes toward others — The Generalized Expectations of Others Questionnaire, a short form of The Attitudes Toward Women Scale and The Mehrabian and Epstein Empathy Scale; and (3) Dogmatism —The Rokeach D Scale and the Revised Authoritarianism Index, When compared to matched control groups of nonabusive males, statistically significant differences were found only for The Self-esteem Inventory and one item of the Generalized Expectations of Others Questionnaire. It is concluded that many of the attitudinal characteristics of abusive males reported in the clinical literature may not be a significant component in the etiology of spouse abuse.     

Enhancing Consistency in Sentencing: Exploring the Effects of Guidelines in England and Wales

Objectives

The development and application of methods to assess consistency in sentencing before and after the 2011 England and Wales assault guideline came into force.

Methods

We use the Crown Court Sentencing Survey to compare the goodness of fit of two regression analyses of sentence length on a set of legal factors before and after the assault guideline came into force. We then monitor the dispersion of residuals from these regressions models across time. Finally, we compare the variance in sentence length of equivalent types of offences using exact matching.

Results

We find that legal factors can explain a greater portion of variability in sentencing after the guideline was implemented. Furthermore, we detect that the unexplained variability in sentencing decreases steadily during 2011, while results from exact matching point to a statistically significant average reduction in the variance of sentence length amongst same types of offences.

Conclusions

We demonstrate the relevance of two new methods that can be used to produce more robust assessments regarding the evolution of consistency in sentencing, even in situations when only observational non-hierarchical data is available. The application of these methods showed an improvement in consistency during 2011 in England and Wales, although this positive effect cannot be conclusively ascribed to the implementation of the new assault guideline.     

Who Is the Client and Who Controls Release of Records in a Forensic Evaluation? A Review of Ethics Codes and Practice Guidelines

Forensic psychologists often refuse to release evaluation records, especially to the evaluee. One justification for this practice is based on the ethical positions that the referral source “is the client” and “controls release of records” (also found in the Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology). To determine whether these ethical positions are shared by the field of forensic mental health, official documents from forensic mental health organizations were used as a proxy for these views. Thirty-four supporting arguments for either position were identified from the literature; it was postulated that official documents would support both positions and utilize supporting arguments. Fifty-four official documents were discovered, and qualitative analysis was used to construct a 17-category model of official views. Neither position was supported by a majority of documents, and few of the supporting arguments were utilized by supportive documents. The positions are unsupported because official documents espouse a wide diversity of views, there are a number of logical flaws in supporting arguments, and even official APA documents hold conflicting views. Ethical arguments are advanced for contrary positions, and the referral-source-control of records release is contrary to law. A more ethical view is that the psychologist may have multiple, possibly conflicting responsibilities to multiple entities; the psychologist’s roles and responsibilities should be clarified with each entity using an informed consent process. Psychologists should release records at the behest of the evaluee, lest they be subject to licensing discipline, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) complaints, and/or civil sanctions. Recommendations are offered for psychologists, future ethics codes and professional practice guidelines, and test security practices.     

NASA Technology Utilization Program: A concept paper on options

The NASA Technology Transfer Program has taken on a variety of roles during the past twenty years. This paper briefly reviews these roles. It presents then several organized approaches that could be adopted to maximize the cost/benefit of technology transfer from NASA to the private sector.