Academic involvement in firm patenting: A study of firms’ academic patents in Sweden

Paper in proceeding, 2010

This paper analyzes the characteristics and impact of academic involvement in industrial invention processes by comparing firms partly university-invented patents, so-called academic patents , with their non-academic patents. In contrast to previous research that studies university-owned patents, this approach allows us to analyze the relative contribution, in terms of patent importance, of academics to industrial inventions. The empirical analysis in this paper is based on a database of Swedish academic patents. Our results indicate that academic involvement mainly takes place in inventions highly related to the technology base, where firms have high existing competencies and much experience. Moreover, in marginal technological fields, academic patents seem to be associated with higher probability of novelty and higher technological impact as compared to non-academic patents. In contrast, academic patents in core technological fields are associated with lower technological impact.