Alexander von Gabain
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SubscribeInnovation, best defined by changes that bring societal impact, is often based on discoveries, inventions and translation – terms with which the word “innovation” itself is frequently mixed up. Academic research and education may support innovation but are insufficient by themselves to drive the process. The stellar economist Joseph Schumpeter recognized the entrepreneur as the key player needed to convert fresh ideas into novel services and products. “He is driving innovation by combining assets, including technologies, in new ways, creating new opportunities, new markets, new economic values and […] the eagerness of millions of people as customers seeking to improve their lives….”
Schumpeter’s notion is underpinned by the story of Alexander Fleming, who, in 1928, discovered by serendipity an antibacterial substance of mold that he coined penicillin, but gave up working on it, because he was convinced – as were many others – that it would be too toxic and not last long enough in the body to kill bacteria. Though invited, he did not join Ernst B. Chain, Howard Florey and Norman Heatley in teaming up to convert the important discovery into a medical drug, which was tested in humans with encouraging effects for the first time in 1941. Florey and Heatley, with a strong passion for science, product development and entrepreneurship, took a journey – pretty risky, at wartime – to the USA, to sell the potential of penicillin to decision makers, in order to find partners to enable the up-scaling and standardization process, which was as important as the initial discovery, and finally transformed penicillin into a usable drug with acceptable side effects.
The mindset of professors towards innovation has changed for the better since Fleming’s day. Today it is a reality amongst top-ranking universities in science and education that they are leaders that are also measured in innovation performance, and that they have become part of an open ecosystem interconnecting the key players needed to facilitate innovation; i.e. science, education, entrepreneurship, risk capital, spin-offs, small and large companies, customers and patients. While the neighborhood of all those functions on the campus is key to unlock the innovation potential of academic hubs, still many universities, even of the better class, are reluctant to invest enough resources to facilitate a strong interface towards innovation, entrepreneurship and corporate alliances.
Differences in attitude towards intellectual property rights (IPR) and technology transfer are best captured by the following historical episode: The two most disruptive inventions that laid the fundament of today’s biotech industry – gene cloning and monoclonal antibody technologies – were initially reported in 1973 by Herbert Boyer (UCSF) and Stanley N. Cohen (Stanford University) and by Cesar Milstein and Georges Köhler (University of Cambridge) in 1975, respectively. While Stanford and UCSF immediately filed the well-known Cohen/Boyer blockbuster patent, giving rise to the first wave of biotech enterprises in the USA, Cambridge at that time did not consider it worthwhile to patent-protect the monoclonal antibody technology; certainly, not a good start for the biotech industry in Europe.
In the accompanying piece below, Danielle Lewensohn, Ph.D student at the Unit of Bioentrepreneurship of the Karolinska Institute (KI), and Per Lundin, a consultant at the thoracic-surgery unit at KI Hospital as well as a patent attorney and former Thomson Reuters employee, summarize a fascinating study, conducted with their colleagues Charlotta Dahlborg and Jan Kowalski. Their 2015 paper addresses management of IPRs at the intersection of academia and industry between 1995 and 2010 at KI. The discussion includes the role of academic researchers in patenting and commercialization, the use of patent data in the evaluation of technology transfer activities and the organization of innovation support at universities. The study strongly supports the notion that universities of the future must redefine their responsibility and interconnect education, research and customers’ needs, with the entrepreneur in the center.
Alexander von Gabain, a research scientist and entrepreneur, is currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Innovation and Commercial Outreach at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. von Gabain will be a panelist at a presentation marking the inaugural release of the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Innovative European Universities Rankings.
Follow this link to read about what's driving innovation in Europe?
Danielle Lewensohn
Per Lundin
Patent Lifespan
A simple patent metric for evaluating academic innovation
Broadening evaluation metrics
Higher education and research institutions are increasingly competing for funding, research talent and students. The pressure to land accreditations and top spots in international university rankings has not gone unnoticed by the institutions themselves nor by their funders. While rankings and benchmarking efforts typically adequately capture academic excellence using bibliometrics, the growing body of university-generated patents enables – and requires – new ways to assess the commercial and utilitarian aspects of academic productivity. However, although patent information is by law made publicly available, there is no standardized approach for extracting key pieces of intelligence from the rich data provided by patent documents. Besides, the awareness among funders and universities is low when it comes to the importance of improved patent metrics. In fact, if patent information is used at all in research evaluation, the focus is usually on simple patent counts (e.g., the numbers of patents assigned to a certain university or filings per year, etc.). Alas, these conventional patent metrics merely provide a one-dimensional snapshot of innovation activities at a single point in time, overlooking important aspect such as success, utility or impact (commercial or societal).
Tracing the patent life cycle
In a paper1 published earlier this year we argue that numerical patent counts are blunt tools for assessing a university’s invention and commercialization efforts. What ought to be considered, in addition to simple patent counts, are more information-dense patent-metrics. Our research shows that data on average patent lifespan – more specifically, for how long a patent or an application remain in force –could serve as a simple yet powerful performance indicator of efforts taken by universities, technology transfer organizations, or academic inventors to commercialize their research results. Compared to listing numbers of patent applications filed annually, patent lifespan offers a more qualitative yet quantifiable approach to the assessment of patented inventions and commercialization at a university. In fact, studies of corporate patenting have observed that the value of patents – or patent quality – is positively correlated with longevity (Pakes and Schankerman 1984; Guellec and van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie 2000 and 2002). The explanation suggested for this observation is that patentees would only pay the annuities required to maintain patents as long as they expect a net benefit or utility from their commercial monopoly (Schankerman and Pakes 1986; Griliches 1990). Furthermore, as patent lifespan data can be linked to expenditures associated with steps in the patent prosecution process, it can also be employed in budgetary forecasting processes and to inform licensing and commercialization decisions.
Implications for benchmarking of universities and higher research institutions
Our study is a unique effort that traces the progress of academic patent applications from cradle to grave. It offers a rationale to use publicly accessible and retrievable legal status data as a complement to numbers of patents and patent citations. The results have potential implications for how universities involved in patenting and commercialization undertake internal evaluations, and how governmental bodies and/or other third-party financiers and policymakers design external performance assessment criteria. The results also point to the potential of combining legal-status data with insights from academic inventors and patent owners to support funding bodies and university managers in resource allocation and for benchmarking purposes.
Key findings and implications of study:
- Evaluators should consider the time frame of evaluation. As it may take several years before a patent application is granted, tracking the number of patent applications filed annually does merely give a ‘snap-shot’ of a patent portfolio. The same issue is applicable to granted patents, which may become abandoned anytime during their lifetime due to the burden of patent fees or a lack of strategic importance.
- Granted patents originating from the Karolinska Institute had a median survival of 14.8 years.
- Patent protected inventions made by senior scientists represented 84% of all patents still in force.
Factors affecting patent lifespan, according to the study:
| Variables | Study results |
| Patent-information based variables | |
| Patent family size | Patents that belong to families of more than 11 members had a higher survival rate |
| Number of claims | Increasing number of claims (above 16) corresponds to a decreasing probability of patent survival |
| Number of assignees | Less is more: Patents with more than one assignee correlated to a shorter lifespan than patents with only one assignee |
| Number of citations | Includes forward and backward citations to patents. Study indicates that forward citations have a strong effect on patent lifespan |
| Contextual variables | |
| Assignees’ market proximity | Patents assigned to an individual, a university spin-off, the university TTO, or a research organization have a higher probability of survival than patents assigned to an SME or an MNC |
| Internal university inventor proportion | Patent applications from solely internal university inventors have a higher probability of survival than patent applications from a mix of inventors |
Table 1: Factors affecting patent lifespan, according to the study
Figure 1: Milestones during the patent lifespan
