When the payoff for academics drops, commercialization suffers

• Autores: Jeffrey Mervis
• Localización: Science, ISSN 0036-8075, Vol. 352, Nº 6284, 2016, págs. 396-396
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • For decades, innovation experts have urged other nations to adopt the U.S. approach to nurturing innovation on campus. One essential element of that model is the practice of giving universities a majority share, typically two-thirds, of the value of a patent or spinoff company that results from the discovery. But a new study suggests that such a formula may actually make it less likely that researchers try to commercialize their work. A 2002 law in Norway that ended the country's long-running practice of giving academics 100% ownership of their intellectual property and adopted a U.S.-style system caused the per capita number of patents from academics to drop by 53% in the next 5 years. Likewise, the per capita formation of university-backed startup companies plunged by 67%. The researchers also found evidence that the quality of the commercial activity had declined.