The Rise of Intellectual Property Protection

Intellectual property scarcely existed in the vocabularies of academic researchers and administrators even 15 years ago. Now it is an ever-present part of discussions on research policies and directions. This new importance of intellectual property in academia reflects a changing view on their relationships of research at universities to the surrounding society. Until recently, research at universities has been relatively isolated from demands of economic utility, and education of graduate students has emphasized a career in academic research as the final goal.

Now almost all research universities in the United States have technology licensing operations. The number of U.S. patents granted to American universities in a year rose from about 300 in 1980 to almost 2000 in 1995. The direct economic impact of technology licensing on the universities themselves has been relatively small. In contrast, the impact of university technology transfer on the local and national economies has been substantial, and leads to the conclusion that the Licensing Act () is one of the most successful pieces of economic development in recent history. It has been estimated that more than 200000 jobs have been created in the United States in product development and manufacturing of products from university licenses, with the number increasing fairly rapidly as the licenses mature.

Intellectual property terms have become vitally important. The company wants to be assured that it can use the results of the research-and that these results will not be available to their competitors. But most universities insist that transfer of research results is pivotal to their identity and mission and will not agree to keep the project results secret. The key to resolving this dilemma is to grant patents: the university will publish the results, but will first agree to file patents that will protect the company's privilege in the commercial market place.