AsianScientist (Jun. 20, 2011) – A recent report issued by the Intellectual Property Owners Association listed 14 universities, including 13 American universities plus China’s Tsinghua University, among the top 300 organizations to receive patents from the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2010.
While the great majority of organizations receiving patents in 2010 were corporations, among 14 universities making the list were the University of California system, with 349 patents awarded, and the University of South Florida, home to the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) with 83.
Other universities on the list were MIT (174), Stanford (155), University of Wisconsin (136), Caltech (134), University of Texas (122), Tsinghua University (104), University of Illinois (85), Columbia University (82), University of Michigan (78), Cornell (74), University of Pennsylvania (77), and University of Washington (74).
“Patented intellectual property originating at universities is playing an increasingly vital role in the global economy, in everything from job creation to raising the quality of health care,” said Dr. Paul R. Sanberg, president of the NAI and senior associate vice president for research and innovation at the University of South Florida.
While corporations may have more focused funding for research that can lead to patents, research dollars for academic efforts toward gaining patents are becoming more scarce, requiring greater efficiency.
To help understand cost-effectiveness at the U.S. universities, the NAI analyzed the 13 American research universities by dividing their last reported federal and total research expenditures (per the National Science Foundation) by the listed number of patents to yield a general efficiency ranking of research expenditures per patent.
In this analysis, Caltech, the University of South Florida and the University of Texas were the most efficient in research expenditures per patent, respectively, followed closely by MIT, Stanford, the University of Illinois, and WARF (University of Wisconsin), based on either federal or total research expenditures.
“Cost-effectiveness is an important and often overlooked issue,” explained Sanberg.
“Given the scarcity of research dollars and the hard work involved in the invention and patenting process, university-based researchers need to get the most ‘bang’ for their research ‘bucks.’ This is especially true as research universities get more involved with industry and economic development, and their budgets increasingly need to diversify research income.”
The full list is available at the NAI website.
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Source: University of South Florida (USF health).
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