Non-parametric analysis of recent trends in productive university technology transfer

Licensing income derived from the commercialization of university research can provide greatly needed revenue for currently constrained university budgets. Most research universities have commissioned technology transfer offices (TTO) to manage this commercialization of university research and facilitate the university technology transfer (UTT) process. In this study of 203 U.S. universities from the database Statistics Access for Tech Transfer (STATT) of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) university surveys, it was found that total university research spending and TTO staffing have a direct relationship in levels of licensing income. In addition, significant differences in productive UTT (ratio of university research spending to licensing income) were found between the following university-subgroups during the ten-year period studied: private and public universities, and universities with medical and without medical schools. Meanwhile, no difference in productivity was found between land and non-land grant universities. Lastly, no significant trends were found in the following selected measures of productivity during 10 years: invention licensing income to total university research expenditures, invention disclosures to patent filed and invention disclosures to invention license agreements executed.