I brevetti accademici di proprietà industriale:caratteri ed impatto economico.

Abstract The attention to the social and economic impact of the public research is grown over time and a relevant typology is represented by the participation of scientist to the technological innovation. A way to understand quality and effects of this involvement in innovation processes is studying characters and impact of academic patents. Patents are defined as academic when at least one public scientist is member of the inventors ‘team. The property of the academic patents can be of the public institution or of the industrial partner or of the single public inventor. Evidences on the value of these inventions are mixed. This article is a contribution to the understanding of characters and effects of the public research participation to innovation processes through an analysis of academic patent hold by industrial companies. The aim is to put in evidence, with a database which matches administrative and statistical information, which are their intrinsic features and if and how they affect the companies’ economic results. The article means to answer to the following issues: 1) If academic patents hold by industrial companies are a real instrument of scientific knowledge transfer or if they are driven and adapted to the industrial demand; 2) Which characters of academic patents, if a more explorative knowledge content or the support to a firms’ already available technical knowledge has a final positive economic effect for firms. Our work confirms some literature results: the research developed through the involvement of public scientists in inventions hold by industrial companies has a low content of technological novelty and low distance from the companies’ current technological competences. Furtherly it has been verified a different effect of the considered academic patents at short and long run and a strong heterogeneity in the companies’ capacity of commercially exploiting less familiar technological fields.