IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/indcch/v29y2020i5p1145-1165..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Academic spill-ins or spill-outs? Examining knowledge spillovers of university patents

Author

Listed:
  • Solon Moreira
  • Thiago J Soares

Abstract

In this article, we investigate whether academic technology-based knowledge crosses university boundaries or remains trapped inside the ivory tower. To do so, we rely on a matched sample approach to compare the spillovers generated by academic and firm patents using measures that take into account knowledge spilling-in and knowledge spilling-out of academia. Although it is true that knowledge exchanges among universities may inflate the overall spillovers of university patents vis-à-vis firm patents, our results indicate that university patents generate more spillovers than a comparable sample of matched corporate patents, even when knowledge flows among universities are not regarded as spillovers. This suggests that, in our sample, firm technologies more frequently rely on academic patents than on technologies from other corporations. In addition, we find that the gap between university and industry spillovers differs across industries, with industries where patents are important for appropriating returns from R&D (i.e. more economically valuable), such as drugs, presenting a smaller gap than in industries with complex technologies (where firms have strong incentives to patent aggressively), such as computers. Finally, we show that industry patents generate more spillovers locally and that academic knowledge spillovers are less geographically localized than those of corporate research.

Suggested Citation

  • Solon Moreira & Thiago J Soares, 2020. "Academic spill-ins or spill-outs? Examining knowledge spillovers of university patents," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 29(5), pages 1145-1165.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:29:y:2020:i:5:p:1145-1165.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtaa011
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shin, Seungryul Ryan & Lee, Jisoo & Jung, Yura Rosemary & Hwang, Junseok, 2022. "The diffusion of scientific discoveries in government laboratories: The role of patents filed by government scientists," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(5).
    2. Concepta McManus & Abilio Afonso Baeta Neves & Alvaro Toubes Prata, 2021. "Scientific publications from non-academic sectors and their impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 8887-8911, November.
    3. Moreira, Solon & Klueter, Thomas Maximilian & Asija, Aman, 2023. "Market for technology 2.0? Reassessing the role of complementary assets on licensing decisions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(7).
    4. Hiroshi Someda & Takanori Akagi & Yuya Kajikawa, 2022. "An analysis of the spillover effects based on patents and inter-industrial transactions for an emerging blockchain technology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4299-4314, August.
    5. Qingyi Chen & Qinglan Qian & Zuolin Yao & Na Yang & Junyue Tong & Yujiao Wang, 2022. "Global–Local Knowledge Spillover Strategic Coupling Network: Biopharmaceutical Industry Study of GBA, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-17, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    O31; O32; O34;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:29:y:2020:i:5:p:1145-1165.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/icc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.