Abstract

Many countries have adopted measures to protect the results of academic research through the use of patents and to promote the transfer of knowledge from the public to the private sector. In parallel, studies have focused on discussing the importance of networks of university researchers for the transfer of university specialization in economically viable applications. This paper uses the dynamics of academic patent ownership to analyze the collaborative networks university-industry in Brazil. The database was built from the patents published by PCT with Brazilian priority for the period 2001-2015. Academic patents can be described as “university academic patents” under the ownership of the university; and “academic non-university patents” are those that have at least one professor bonded to the University and listed as an inventor in the patent application. It was verified that the collaboration of Brazilian universities with the productive sector is still small, only 11,8%. However, the lack of university-industry interactions is more significant when the patent is under the ownership of the university compared to “academic non-university patents”. 68.2% of university patents do not collaborate with other institutions. If we add to the public research organizations, the percentage is 73.5%. Of the total non-university patents, 49.7% owned to companies, followed by 30.6% of patents attributed to individuals. Ownership of the patent may be an indicator of the commercial interest of the invention, but the evidence in this paper indicates that higher university ownership is not correlated with higher quality academic patents. Our discussion reinforces that recent innovation policies in Brazil have encouraged the hype of university patenting. Another factor is also in the ability of companies to absorb knowledge. The results achieved are pioneering in what regards Brazil. It would be interesting to analyze the potential and economic value of the licensing of the university and non-university academic patents.

Keywords: academic patent, university, industry, collaboration, Brazil.

JEL Classification: O34.

Cite as: Silva, K., & Vasconcellos, A. G. (2018). Academic inventors and patent rights: structure of collaboration in academic patents and university patents in Brazil. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 3, 21-33. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2018.3-02

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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