Abstract
Patent licensing is one of the most important methods of technology transfer, and universities can be an important source of patent licensing within national innovation systems (NIS). In this chapter we examine how Chinese universities, including those supported by government programs aimed at developing science and technology, and patents, contribute to China’s NIS through patent licensing. To do this, we develop a composite dataset from multiple information sources and use a combination of research methods such as text mining, scientometrics, and social network analysis, to analyze the structural features of patent licensing activities by Chinese universities. We find that universities that are part of Project 211, which is a government program to support technological development in certain Chinese universities, play an important role in patent licensing. We find that increased patent licensing between entities in lesser-developed regions and universities in relatively more developed regions—particularly those with more capabilities to develop patented technologies worth out-licensing—could be useful to better diffuse technology throughout China’s NIS. Furthermore, this may be feasible since geographic distance itself does not appear to significantly inhibit patent licensing by universities in China. Considering these findings, we discuss ways in which the Project 211, and some other Chinese policies, could be improved in order to better contribute to technology transfer in China’s NIS.
Yun Liu: Director of Research Center for Scientific Assessment and Innovation Management and Professor, School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
Long Tan: School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
Yi-jie Cheng: School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
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Notes
- 1.
“Over 10 billion RMB to be invested in ‘Program 211’”—People’s Daily Online.
- 2.
- 3.
Three types of patents, namely, invention, utility model and industrial design patents have been protected in the Chinese Mainland ever since the first patent law was enacted in 1984. Of these, invention patents are strictly examined and are believed to be of high quality under the international standards concerning novelty, creativity and utility. Regardless of the differences in the patent system across countries, which may lead to diversity of patent quality and value, invention patents or simply ‘patents’ are taken as the universal and basic measurement of innovation activity all across the world (Zuniga et al. 2009; van Zeebroeck et al. 2008). Utility model and industrial design patents are also important because inventors can make ‘small inventions’ by absorbing and improving complex inventions of high quality as quickly as possible, in order to adapt to the changing market and especially any lagging innovation competence. Some argue that incremental innovation is important for a developing country like China (Breznitz and Murphree 2010). For these reasons, in this chapter the three types of patents are discussed.
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Acknowledgments
The paper was funded by the National Science Foundation of China (No. 71573017 and No. 71273030).
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Liu, Y., Tan, L., Cheng, Yj. (2016). University Patent Licensing and Its Contribution to China’s National Innovation System. In: Prud’homme, D., Song, H. (eds) Economic Impacts of Intellectual Property-Conditioned Government Incentives. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1119-1_10
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