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Our objective is to study Canada's patenting activity over time in aggregate terms by destination country, by assignee and destination country, and by diversification by country of destination. We collect bibliographic patent data from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. We identify 19,957 matched Canada–US patents, 34,032 Canada-only patents, and 43,656 US-only patents from 1980 to 2014. Telecommunications dominates in terms of International Patent Classification technologies for US-only and Canada–US patents. At the firm level, the greatest number of matched Canada–US patents were granted in the field of telecommunications, at the university level in pharmaceuticals, at the government level in control and instrumentation technology, and at the individual level in civil engineering. We use entropy to quantify technological diversification and find that diversification indices decline over time for Canada and the USA; however, all US indices decline at a faster rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 30 years, university patenting has grown dramatically as a result of the US Bayh-Dole Act (1980) and efforts among universities to encourage faculty to pursue intellectual property. Recent reviews of the literature show that university technology transfer is primarily conceptualized in terms a relatively linear process of disclosure, patenting, and licensing. While this is the general pattern for university patenting, many faculty inventions are also patented outside the university. Using data from a national survey of academic patenters, this paper estimates probit and negative binomial regression models to assess individual and organizational factors that contribute to patenting external to the traditional technology transfer process among university scientists. Findings indicate that external patenting is a function of the science, scientist's training, and the lack of a department culture of encouraging patenting via technology transfer offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an empirical perspective and using some historical elements, we speculate about the role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the information and communications technology paradigm in the context of production fragmentation and global value chains and the challenges they impose on learning. We use an evolutionary economics framework to understand the importance of 'learning' in a competitive economy where firms that absorb knowledge increase their opportunities to innovate and to obtain larger market shares. Exploring data from Brazil and South Korea we find similarities in both countries regarding the intellectual property (IP) balance of payments: both have an IP balance of payments deficit. However, data from national IPRs offices shows that residents in South Korea are more apt to generate knowledge than residents in Brazil, which can be attributed to the difference in importance given by these countries to their industrial policies and the way both have integrated global value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the importance of early-career characteristics of academic inventors and how they affect their patenting activity. Using a novel dataset on 555 UK academic inventors, we find that the quality of the first invention is the best predictor for subsequent participation in the patenting process. We further find evidence for a positive training effect whereby researchers who were trained at universities that had already established commercialisation units patent more. In addition, researchers who gained their first patenting experience in industry are able to benefit from stronger knowledge flows and receive more citations than their purely academic peers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nations, universities, and regional governments promote the dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge. They focus on knowledge-based innovations and the university’s economic function in terms of technology transfer, intellectual property, university–industry–government relations etc. Faculties other than engineering or applied sciences, however, may not be able to recognize opportunities in this ‘linear model’ of technology transfer. We elaborate a non-market perspective on the third mission in terms of disclosure of the knowledge and areas of expertise available for disclosure to other audiences at a provincial university. The use of information and communications technologies can enhance communication between actors on the supply and demand sides. Using an idea developed in the context of the Dutch science shops, university staff were questioned about keywords and areas of expertise with the specific purpose of disclosing this information to audiences other than academic colleagues. The results were brought online in a hyperlink index structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent political initiatives and changes in the intellectual property rights systems of European countries call for improved evaluation methods. The aim of this article is to present a new approach to the identification of academic patents and to test its applicability. The approach is based on the matching of author names from scientific publications with inventor names from patent filings and is demonstrated by university-based patents in Germany. Measuring academic patent activity remains a complex task, as there are many cases of university-based patents not being filed by the universities themselves. Previous approaches relying on official staff lists of universities or searches for keywords provided interesting new findings. But, they tend to be time-consuming and cost-intensive or are to a large extent based on estimations. In this article, we show that our suggested approach is a reliable, but less expensive alternative. Besides significant methodological contributions, the article also indicates promising future research avenues for country comparisons, comparisons over time, and analyses at the level of individual academic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Contemporary thoracic and cardiovascular surgery uses extensive equipment and devices to enable its performance. As the specialties develop and new frontiers are crossed, the technology needs to advance in a parallel fashion. Strokes of genius or problem-solving brain-storming may generate great ideas, but the metamorphosis of an idea into a physical functioning tool requires a lot more than just a thinking process. A modern surgical device is the end-point of a sophisticated, complicated and potentially treacherous route, which incorporates new skills and knowledge acquisition. Processes including technology transfer, commercialisation, corporate and product development, intellectual property and regulatory routes all play pivotal roles in this voyage. Many good ideas may fall by the wayside for a multitude of reasons as they may not be marketable or may be badly marketed. In this article, we attempt to illuminate the components required in the process of surgical innovation, which we believe must remain in the remit of the modern-day thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper discusses the cases of two universities in Vietnam and their third mission activities where they try to reach out to society at large, through the provision of research, technology transfer services, and other kinds of linkages. It is revealed that third mission activities exist in practice but are closely linked and even mixed up with the second mission. The cases show that the policy framework for financial incentives, management mechanisms, salaries and intellectual property rights, for instance, considerably influences the third mission. There is a need both for government mechanisms to support third mission activities for the community, as well as for a proactive approach by the universities themselves to develop partnerships with other actors in the provinces. These measures include regional training centers and action plans to support farmers and disadvantaged groups of people in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a growing view that universities could and should play a larger and more direct role in assisting industry and promoting national competitiveness. This review of the literature on university patenting and licensing activity is based on 125 papers published between 1980 and 2004, which were obtained by querying ABI/INFORM and EconLit using as key-words "university", "patent", "license", "Bayh-Dole", "triple helix" and by an abstract-by-abstract reading of all issues of 15 scientific journals and the NBER working papers database since 1995. Major findings include that the surge of university patents did not happen at the expense of their quality, nor of the quality of re-search. Moreover, scientific excellence and technology transfer activities mutually reinforce. Finally, university patenting and related activities need a fertile context to develop both inside and outside the campus. The US success story cannot be imitated by simply changing IP laws and by transferring ownership of IPRs from the inventors to the performing institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]