University autonomy, IP legislation and academic patenting: Italy, Francesco Lissoni 1,2, Michele Pezzoni 2,3, Bianca Potì 4, Sandra Romagnosi 5 1 GREThA – Université Bordeaux IV - France 2 CRIOS – Università "L. Bocconi", Milan - Italy 3 Dept of Economics, Università Milano-Bicocca - Italy APE-INV Final Conference 4 CERIS-CNR, Rome - Italy 5 Parco ScientificoUniversità "Tor Vergata", Rome - Italy APE-INV Final Conference Paris, 3-4 / 9 / 2013

Motivation & Research Questions Contribute to recent literature on academic patenting in Italy (Europe) by: 1.What/Any trend in academic patenting? Weight of academic patenting on total domestic patenting Ownership: Universities’ share of IP over academic inventions (vs individuals’, PROs’, and business companies’ share) 2.Exploring links between (1) and two policy changes: The granting of autonomy to universities (incl. financial autonomy), in 1989 (effective kick-off: 1995) The introduction of the professor privilege, in 2001

Reasons for focusing on universities’ autonomy Policy: widespread diffusion of autonomy-granting/enhancing reforms in all Europe (e.g. “loi Pecresse” in France, 2007); large universities’ quest for more autonomy (e.g. EUA’s report, 2009) Scholarly research - in sociology: “entrepreneurial university” (Clark, 1993); in economics: autonomy&competition  perfomance link (Aghion et al., 2009)  Increasing emphasis on “third mission”: is it materializing? (weight of academic patenting)  Decrease of “block grant” funding  project funding & technology transfer as additional sources of revenues: do universities look at IPRs as a source of revenue?  Changes in academic profession’s status (from civil servants to university employees): are universities seizing professors’ IPR assets?

Reasons for focusing on the professor privilege Policy: 1.wave of abolitions in German-speaking and Scandinavian countries since 2000  inefficient legal institution, standing in the way of commercialization of academic research results 2.BUT Italy has introduced it in 2001  incentive-setting justification BUT contradiction with autonomy granting to universities Scholarly research – some recent advocacy for the privilege (Kenney, 2009)

Conclusions /1 A. The absolute number of academic patents has increased, but (i) their weight on total patenting by domestic inventors has not (ii)the share of university-owned acad. patents has increased B. The probability to observe an academic patent depends on: - the technology considered - the science-intensity of research, - and the characteristics of the local innovation system After controlling for these determinants: (iii) the conditional probability to observe an academic patent has declined over time.

Conclusions /2 C. The rise of university ownership is explained by: (iv) the increasing share of public vs. private R&D (v)the increased autonomy of Italian universities  introduction of explicit IP regulations D. The introduction of the professor privilege in 2001 had no impact at all on either trends  opposed and defeated by universities, thanks to their newly gained autonomy

Methodology for data collection 1.Name disambiguation of inventors (EPO patent applications)  free inventor database: 2.Professor-inventor name matching: 3 professors’ cohorts  inventors [academic patent  patent with at least 1 academic inventors] 3.Filtering of false matches by: (i) automatic criteria (ii) past surveys (iii) ongoing survey (iv) probability estimates of no-responses

University autonomy in Italy: a quick look *** The professor privilege in Italy: an even quicker look

University autonomy L.168/1989: basic principles and creation of ad-hoc Ministry Several laws/decrees Financial autonomy 1.Key block grant: FFO ("Fondo di Finanziamento Ordinario"): starts at 90% of all revenues  automatic decline 2.Universities become free to collect other revenues  great heterogeneity 3. No systematic tie with university-industry technology transfer policy 4.(for a while) GERD grows faster than BERD  (Epidemic) diffusion of IP regulations (IP_STATUTE) and TTOs at the university-level  Little correlation between the two diffusion processes

Weight of block funds (FFO) and public funds for scientific reserach on Italian Universities’ totale revenues (sources: AQUAMETH, CNSVU)

Diffusion of IPR statutes and TechTransfer Offices in Italian Universities (sources: own elaboration on NETVAL survey; CNSVU survey)

The professor privilege Introduced in 2001 Unsolicited, indeed resisted by universities (unsuccessfully at legal level; possibly successfully at IP regulation level) Reformed in 2005 (abolished for research co-sponsored by industry)

Econometric Analysis 2-step Heckman Probit STEP1: probability of an Italian patent to be academic, as a function of: - time (year dummies) - patent characteristics (IPC class, NPL backward citations, nr inventors) -regional innovation system: BERD/GDP; universities’ and PROs’ share of R&D -regional university system: diffusion of university IP statutes and TTO; weight of FFO over total revenues;  Estimate of academic patenting trend, conditional on changing environment

STEP2: probability of an academic patent to be owned by the inventor’s university, as a function of: - time(year dummies) - patent characteristics & regional innovation system -university’s characteristics: - fixed effect (dummies) - time-variant: - adoption of IP statute - TTO opening - weight of FFO over total revenues ; - weight of FFO over total revenues ( FFO_RATIO) ;  Estimate of ownership trend, as a function of increasing autonomy & conditional on changing environment  Similar estimates for individual & business ownership

KEY RESULTS STEP1 (probability of an Italian patent to be academic) - negative trend after controlling for patent characteristics (less- than expected composition effect) - “classic” results for patent characteristics -Positive effect of both BERD/GDP (demand side) and universities’ share of R&D (supply side) -No effect of FFO_RATIO

KEY RESULTS STEP2 (probability of university ownership) - positive trend after all controls (  unexplained trend) - “classic” results for patent characteristics -Positive effect of universities’ share of R&D (supply side) -No effect of FFO_RATIO -Positive effect of IP statute adoption vs no effect of TTO opening

Further research 1) The value of academic patents, by type of ownership Lower? Lissoni and Montobbio (2013) + role of universities in weaker regions Higher? Learning effect & increased autonomy (  see Flemish case) 2) Changes of property and markets for patents 3) Lessons for evaluation exercise (e.g. ANVUR)  Which patents do count? Which patents shall we count?  University-owned patents are a (non-representative?) subset of all academic patents  Counting university-owned patents may generate perverse incentives in favour of patent filing / aggressive stances towards business sponsors & faculty  Use of public data such as PatStat / APE-INV