Academic patenting in Japan -Some policy issues-

Isamu YamauchiResearch Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)

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APE-INV 3-4 September 2013

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Outline

1. Japanese policy reforms related to academic patenting

2. Some evidence on academic patenting in Japan from existing research– Professors’ privilege and Autonomy

3. Policy issues and future work– Japanese inventor survey

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Major policy reforms in Japan

year Policy reform

1995 Science and Technology Basic Law

1996 Science and Technology Basic Plan

1998 TLO Act (Law to Promote the Transfer of University Technologies)

1999 Japanese Bayh-Dole Act

2001 The 1st Hiranuma Plan (establishing 1000 startups within three years)

2004 Incorporation of national universities

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Direction of Policy ReformsSchoen and Buenstorf (2013)

J ulie, Mariette, Bart andKoenraad (2013)

Lissoni, Pezzoni, Poti andromagnosi (2013)

J apan Germany Flanders Italy

1989 Increase autonomy(Changing the governance andfunding system)

1990

Regional governance ofuniversities

1995 1990, 1993, 1996 Educational

1996 Basic Plan 1993, 1996 Abolishment of PP and financial autonomy1998 EXIST program (Supporting spin-offs)

Block grant funding

1998 TLO ActIncentivizing universitypatenting

Competitive funding was alsointroduced

1999 J apanese Bayh-Dole Act2000

2001 Hiranuma Plan 2001 Introduction of PP (1,000 spin-offs in three years) 2002 Abolishment of PP

Supporting BridgingInstitutions(21 regional patent

2004 Incorporation of Nationaluniversity

2005 2005 Cometitive funding

2004 Financial support for thefollow-up academic researchaims at transferring toindustry

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Reforms during Late90s and early2000s

Autonomy

University ownership

Professors’ Privilege

Governmental control

JP (Private Univ.)

JP (National Univ.)

Germany

ItalyUnited Kingdom

US (private Univ.)

Flanders

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Identification of university-invented patents with Japanese patent database

• Standard method (Motohashi and Muramatsu, 2011)– Identifying the inventor’s affiliation by using the

postal address1. In most cases, the inventors working at private

company and public research organization write their organization’s address

2. University researchers tend to give personal residential addresses as well as the individual inventors

3. Individual inventors name themselves as applicants, while the university researchers are less likely to be applicants

– Assume the patents that the corporate names are listed as applicants and at least one personal residential address is shown in the field of inventors’ address as the university-invented patents

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Trends of Academic patent

Source: Motohashi and Muramatsu (2011) “ Examining the University Industry Collaboration Policy in Japan: Patent Analysis”

University-owned University-invented

Share of Academic patent (right axis)

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Patent ownership

• Share of university-owned patents in Japan is similar to that of Germany and UK– consistent with the institutional similarity between

Japan and Germany 

Motohashi and Muramatsu(2011)

Schoen and Buenstorf(2013)

Lawson (2013) J ulie, Mariette, Bartand Koenraad (2013)

Lissoni, Pezzoni, Potiand Romagnosi (2013)

J apan Germany United Kingdom Flanders Italy

sample Patent applicatoins filedafter 1990 (to 2006)including at least oneuniversity researcher as aninventor

Patent applicationsfiled by 665 professorslisted as inventors in2006-07

Patents filed by 176(out of 744) tenuredengineering academicsemployed at thirteenUK universities during2001-2008

EPO and USPTOgranted patents of allFlemish universitiesfiled between 1991 and2001

Patent applicationsfiled with DPO between1999 and 2007including at least oneinventor with anItalian address

Academicpatents

87,927 applications(Share of academic patetnsis about 1.5% in 2006)

1,167 applications 456 patents 720 patents Share of academicpatents is about 6.7%in 2006 (upper bound)

University-owned

3,200 applications in 2006(52%)

691 applicatoins(59.2%)

219 patents (48%) 30% 25% in 2006 (upperbound)

University-invented

3,000 applications in 2006(48%)

476 applications(40.8%)

226 patents (50%) 70%

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Motohashi and Muramatsu(2011)

Ljungberg, Bourelos andMckelvey (2013)

Schoen and Buenstorf (2013)J ulie, Mariette, Bart andKoenraad (2013)

J apan Sweden Germany Flanders

Comparison Firm-owned academic patentsvs. Firm-owned non-academicpatents

Firm-owned academic patentsvs. Firm-owned non-academicpatents

University-owned patents vs.university-invented patents

University-owned patents vs.university-invented patents

Quality Firm-owned academic patentshave higher "non-self"forward citationsFirm-owned non-academicpatetns have higher "self"forward citations

Firm-owned academic patentshave lower "short-term"forward citations but similar"long-term" forward citationsas Firm-owned non-academicpatents

Larger number of forwardcitations is associated with ahigher liklihood of universityownership (for GU)

University-owned patentsreceive more forwardcitations than university-invented patents

Researchsubject

Generality of academicpatents was higher than theone of non-academic patentsuntil 1999However, the difference hasdisappeared since 2000

Larger number of referrencesto non-patent literature islikely to be owned byuniversity (for GU)

There is no difference on thegenerality

Impact on the patent quality and research subject

• Firm-owned academic patents have higher number of forward citations in Japan– Policy change can increase the quality of academic patents

• Policy reforms may tilt the research focus from basic to applied research in Japan – Partly consistent with the Flanders case

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Policy concerns (1): Multitask issue• Putting an effort on the third mission may reduce the resources that the researchers can allocate to the research and education– Increase in the financial autonomy has increased the tasks for

acquiring and managing competitive grants– Kanda and Kuwahara (2011)• Research time accounted for 47.5% of the work hours in 2002. The

percentage fell to 36.1% in 2008• Research quality– Positive correlation between academic patenting and the patent

quality (Motohashi and Muramatsu, Shoen and Buenstorf, and Julie et. al)

– Carraz (2013)• Patenting and publishing are complementary in terms of quantity

in Japan–Martinez, Azagra-caro and Maraut (2013)• Patenting by public universities has a positive effect on the quality

of publication (the number of forward citations to the articles) in Spain

– Yoneyama, Watanabe and Hasegawa (2012)• An inverse U-shaped relation between the frequency of the

collaboration with industry and university researchers’ academic performance

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Policy concerns (2): low needs for academic patents

• Low usage rate and low license revenue of academic patents– Average usage rate for academic patents is about 18% in 2009– The cost of patenting for academics is significantly higher than the

license revenue

• University should take more efficient strategy to screen out the inventions without worth patenting

6.0

28.2

-22.16

17.3

34

-16.69

-30.0

-20.0

-10.0

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

ALicense revenue

=(License-out - License-in)

BCost for patenting(application fee +

examinatoin request fee+ maintenance fee +

attoney cost)

A-BProfit from patenting

Profit from patenting activity

20052009

Data source: Survey on Intellectual Property Activity, Japan Patent Office

20.6%

42.6%

18.4%

47.4%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

University, Public ResearchOrganization and TLO

All

Usage rate of patent

20052009

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Research needed

• Importance of the academic patents for the firm– Who refers to the academic patents?– Share of the academic patents over their backward citations– Impact on the firm’s innovation performance

• Relative importance of the scientific papers to the academic patents as a knowledge source of corporate inventors’ innovation activities

• Relationship between the corporate inventors’ science activities and the university’s role as a supplier of scientific knowledge– University’s approach to industry would activate the

corporate inventors’ science activities and decrease the importance of the university as a supplier of scientific knowledge

– Firm’s scientific activity can improve the absorptive capacity of science and can increase the effect of collaboration with university

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Inventor Surveys

1. RIETI-Georgia Tech Inventor Survey• Target

– Japanese inventors on triadic patent applications with priority years from 1995 to 2001.

• Triadic patents: 3,658 

2. PatVal2 Survey• Target

– Japanese inventors on the patent applications filed with both EPO and JPO with priority years from 2003 to 2005

– 5,289 patents

• Triadic patents: 4,428

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Corporate inventors’ science activities and importance of scientific papers

• For the inventors who think of the university as an important knowledge source of the invention, – Both patents and papers are rated high value as a knowledge source– Importance of patent has increased while the importance of papers has

decreased– Frequency of writing academic papers has increased during a decade

• The role of the university as a supplier of the scientific papers has been decreasing for the corporate inventors– Corporate inventors have come to bear a part of the role of writing papers

35.5%

16.1%

40.5%

13.6%

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

25.0%

30.0%

35.0%

40.0%

45.0%

important not important

1995-20012003-2005

Changes in the share of inventors writing a paper

Importance of university as a knowledge source of invention

4.0 4.2

3.22.8

4.1 3.93.7

2.5

0.00.51.01.52.02.53.03.54.04.55.0

Patent Paper Patent Paper

important not important

1995-20012003-2005

Changes in the importance of patents and papers as a knowledge source of invention

Importance of university as a knowledge source of invention

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Concluding remarks (Future work)

• How the industry uses the academic patents • Whether the use of academic patents

improves the firm’s innovation performance– Differentiate the long-term effect and the short-

term effect

• Impact of industrialization of the university on corporate inventors’ scientific activity

Balancing the “Industrialization of academics” and the “Academization of industry” is important