Ceris-Cnr, W.P. N° 10/2005

3.3 Scientific incentive versus economic
incentive
Does patent production follows the same
incentives of scientific production, i.e.
reputation based reward, associated with
recognition by peers, new position in better
locations and wage increase?
Carayol (2004) considers that patents follow
a slightly different incentive regime, since the
research leading to high performance in
publication can be different from the one
leading to patents (therefore patents are not
often a by product of publications); and the
reputational reward of patent may not be
evaluated in the same way by scientific
community and not produce the same effect in
terms of career.
The question therefore is if and how
publishing affects patenting. Following Agrawal
and Henderson (2002), patenting is not affected
by publishing activity. Carayol (2004) explores
the non neutrality of publishing, on the basis of
two different hypothesis: that one may expect a
positive effect of publication (best researchers
can exhibit both the best patenting and
publishing profile) and on the other hand that
some researchers specialize in patenting.
His conclusion is that the academic reward
system doesn’t provide incentives for patenting.
The reputational reward of patent seems low and
this is a disincentive for young researcher to
patent, while older researchers are more
sensitive to value the application of their
research and its pay off. In sum, patenting
should ask for a specific strategy, often in
collaboration with industry.
Calderini, Franzoni and Pezzulli (2004) also
studied the effect of quantity and quality of
scientific publications over the decision to
patent, controlling for the effect of personal,
institutional and environmental characteristics
by a sample of 1323 Italian public researchers.
They find that the probability of patenting with
private company increases with quantity and
quality of publications, the expertise of TTO and
the presence of firms in the area of scientist
location; the probability to patenting depends on
reputation accumulated along the career, but the
probability of patenting for a top scientists is

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very low. This can be probably due to the fact
that top scientists “do not engage in contract
research because their time is fully financed”. In
sum the effect of scientific productivity is higher
than scientific quality on the probability of
patenting with industry.

3.4 The role of regulatory framework
As to the patent regulatory framework (patent
laws and related administrative regulations),
some authors (Meyer Kramher and Schomch,
1998) see it as one important factor explaining
the different national patterns in university
patenting. Nevertheless there is a lack of in depth study on the national patent laws impact
on public patenting. An interesting track can be
found in Harhoff and Hoisl (2004) work on the
German Employees’ Invention Act and
particularly on the monetary compensation for
inventors, that in Germany is regulated by law
and not (as in other countries, included Italy) by
negotiations between employer and employee
inventor. Their study is based on a survey
collected within the scope of a European project
(PatVal) started in 2002 and even if it is not
specifically dedicated to public inventors, it
gives a good insight into the functioning of a
patent’s economic compensation scheme and its
capacity of creating incentive to patent for
employee inventors.
Policies on ownership of patent at public
research organisation are changing within Oecd
countries and encouraging the ownership of
invention by the institution where the research
have been performed. A way for realising these
change in Europe passed through modifying the
employment laws, so that university professors
are not exempted from legislation that gives
employers the ownership of the intellectual right
generated by employees.
In Italy, as presented above, two kinds of
change, with different rationale, happened in a
short time:
− in 2001 (L 383, art 7) the IP title was
recognised to the individual researcher
employed by a university or a public
research organization; as a consequence the