Performances of Technology Transfer Activities of US Universities after Bayh-Dole Act

Abstract

The activities and performance of university patenting and licensing are studied to gauge the effectiveness of the Bayh-Dole Act, which is the most influential pieces of US legislation on university technology transfer. Based on the raw data from five different sources, the annual numbers of the patents granted, the licenses signed, and the startup companies launched are analyzed. The correlation evaluations are performed for all data presented to quantify the trends at different time periods. It is found that the patenting and licensing activities in US universities slow down greatly after 2000 and remain actually flat until 2010, while the associate activities from 2010 to 2012 are active and strong again to the level in the period before 2000 and after the enactment of the Act. Some explanations on the differences found in the different data sources and different time periods are provided.