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Licensing of university inventions to industry has experienced rapid, recent growth. This growth is cited as evidence of university success in technology transfer and it suggests an increasing importance of universities to innovation systems. Concerns have been raised that universities are moving towards applied research and away from fundamental research in efforts to capture licensing income. However, figures on growth in licensing perhaps paint a misleading picture, given the substantial variation in licensing success across universities, scientific fields, and technologies. The paper is organized around the following questions. What is the rationale behind university patenting and licensing? How embryonic are university inventions and how often is further development necessary? What is the record on exclusive versus non-exclusive licensing? What is the record on licensing revenue? What are university licensing goals? What is the role of faculty after a licence is signed? Have faculty been diverted from their traditional role in research? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the nature of the involvement of faculty in university licensing is important for understanding how technology is transferred through licensing as well as more controversial issues, such as the need for university licensing. Using data from a survey of firms that actively license in from universities, the authors explore the importance of faculty in the licensing and development of inventions, as well as how and why they are used and how the use of faculty relates to characteristics of firms. In particular, the authors find that the use of faculty through sponsored research in lieu of 'a license is closely related to the amount of basic research conducted by firms, whereas the use of faculty within the terms of a license is related to the prevalence of personal contacts between industry research and development researchers and university faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors previously explored invention licensing from the university's perspective. In this paper we focus on the process from the perspective of firms activity engaged in licensing technology. A survey of industry licensing professionals addresses why some firms license technologies from universities and why others do not. The paper then considers the stage of development of university technologies, the characteristics of their licensing contracts, and sources of information about university technologies, all to better understand how the process works and what advantages and disadvantages it offers to all participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, commercial use of university research has been viewed in terms of spillovers. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in technology transfer through licensing as universities attempt to appropriate the returns from faculty research. This change has prompted concerns regarding the source of this growth&specifically, whether it suggests a change in the nature of university research. We develop an intermediate input model to examine the extent to which the growth in licensing is due to the productivity of observable inputs or driven by a change in the propensity of faculty and administrators to engage in commercializing university research. We model licensing as a three-stage process, each involving multiple inputs. Nonparametric programming techniques are applied to survey data from 64 universities to calculate total factor productivity (TFP) growth in each stage. To examine the sources of TFP growth, the productivity analysis is augmented by survey evidence from businesses who license-in university inventions. Results suggest that increased licensing is due primarily to an increased willingness of faculty and administrators to license and increased business reliance on external R&D rather than a shift in faculty research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]