Comparing University-Ownership Technology Transfer Systems With University-Inventor Technology Transfer Systems In Scandinavian Universities – A Question Of Focusing On Licensing Or Spin-Off Business Models?

Universities have become important components of the national innovation systems in innovation driven economies. To strengthen the university related flow of mainly technological knowledge into commercialized products many European countries have followed the American example and changed from an inventor-ownership system to a university-owned system (Genua & Rossi, 2011). Today most European countries have adopted a university-ownership system but with varying characteristics (Genua & Rossi, 2011). One of the strongest effects of changing to a university-owned system is a strengthening of the university support structures especially the founding or expansion of a Technology-Transfer organization (TTO). Most research indicates an increased output of patent applications, university-owned patents and license deals from the European universities (Genua & Rossi, 2011; Siegel et al, 2007). Will the university owned system give privilege to patents and license deals instead of trying to capture a higher value from university ownership in a university spinout as Kenney & Patton’s (2009; 2011) research indicate?

The Scandinavian countries have since a decade changed university laws, policies and allocated specific resources in order to stimulate commercialization of university research. While Denmark and Norway changed intellectual property laws in favor of university ownership and pushed for commercialization early in the 2000's, Sweden retained the professor’s privilege system or university inventor system. The paper reports on a survey of Scandinavian universities’ technology-transfer offices regarding their patenting, licensing and university-spin-off activities in the years from 2000 to 2012. Results show an increase in commercialization activities in Denmark and Norway confirming earlier results by Genua and Rossi (2011). The Danish development shows a clear increase of patenting and licensing activity but a stagnation of university spin-outs. The Norwegian development is less clear but also here a pattern of more licensing and stagnation of spinouts is visible. In contrast Swedish universities’ TTO-systems are organized for spinouts and produce mostly university spinouts. Patenting is done also in Sweden but primarily in conjunction with the spinout process. Moreover, pure licensing deals are rare in the Swedish system. The study provides some support for Kenney and Patton’s (2009; 2011) results that university owned systems favour the business model of patenting and licensing while university inventor systems favour the business model of spinoffs. This study does however note the effect of other factors than the university intellectual property regime as important in the development. These are government initiatives and resource allocations for university commercialization, the capabilities of the TTO and the universities’ choice of commercialization support structure.