Identification of University Inventors and University Patenting Patterns at Lund University:Conceptual- Methodological & Empirical Findings

One of the most interesting indicators to show the change in the socio-economic role of universities in the last several decades has been the use of university patenting. However except some individual studies in European countries (e.g. Finland, Norway, Belgium, Italy, Germany and France) there has been no such a comprehensive data available for Sweden and most other European countries. The main motivation of this paper is therefore to obtain a systematic database on university patenting activities in Sweden. The main method of this research is data-matching between the EPO-patents and Lund University Faculty registers, and manual controls. The methodology of this research underlines the importance of searching for university-patents by the name of university inventors rather their affiliated university. The rate of patenting activity showed a positive trend between the years 1990 and 2004. 458 patents have been filed by Lund University researchers. The total number of inventors is 250. Although the number of large firms is lesser than the SMEs, the former group (e.g. Ericsson, Astra-Zeneca) has applied for a larger number of patents than the total number of patents of SMEs.