Ceris-Cnr, W.P. N° 10/2005 

The patenting regime in the Italian public research system. What motivates public inventors to patent

Bianca Potě, Emanuela Reale

Abstract:  The paper deals with two aspects: the public ownership of intellectual property rights and the holding of the title (individuals vs institutions) for the public financed research.
A key problem in the past and still now in Europe has been the low transfer of results coming from public research to industrial users. Recently a new trend developed which favours the patenting of the scientific results of public actors. This change partly comes from the modification of the public funding mechanism of allocation and goes with changes in the regulation and regime related to the ownership of intellectual property rights.
The paper is built on a pilot study, which controlled if and how the modification in national regulation affected the actors’ behaviour. It is based on a survey of public inventors, in two public institutions (Cnr and Roma 1 University) who disclosed their inventions to the institutions in the last three years; on interviews with the responsible persons of the patent offices in the two institutions and on some data from the Cnr 2005 patent portfolio.
This pilot study on public patenting in Italy seems to confirm the persistence of the academic incentives in the patenting activities of the public research institutions, even in presence of the 2001 patenting regime, aimed to assign IPR title to the public inventors.
Furthermore the results highlight the presence of a relation between public institutions and firms that are not completely captured by the patenting indicators. Patents are only the emerging part of a more large hidden area of relationships between public institutions and industrial firms.
 

Keywords: Public patenting, Regulation on public patenting, Incentives for public inventors, Determinants of public patenting.

JEL Codes:  K11; 034; 031.

 

SCARICA QUESTO WP

 

Ceris-Cnr,
Section on: Science and technology institutions and policies     
Via dei Taurini, 19, 00185 Roma, Italy
 e-mail: b.poti@ceris.cnr.it, e.reale@ceris.cnr.it
 Phone: +390649937853 Fax: +390649937808