U.S. PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
Information Products Division
Technology Assessment and Forecast (TAF) Branch

U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES-
UTILITY PATENT GRANTS 1969-2000

- this report has been prepared with support from the National Science Foundation -


General Description of the Report

This report, prepared by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Office of Information Dissemination Services, summarizes the patenting activity of U.S. colleges, universities, and associations composed of U.S. colleges and universities obtaining utility patents (i.e., 'patents for inventions') during calendar years 1969-2000. Several statistical tables are provided that display the patent activity for all U.S. college and university institutions. Other statistical tables display the patent activity for each U.S. college and university institution ranked in the top 100 by total research and development (R&D) expenditures in fiscal year (FY) 1999. Academic institutions ranked in the top 100 for R&D expenditures in FY 1999 were identified from the National Science Foundation report, Academic Research and Development Expenditures, Fiscal Year 1999 (early release Tables).

Patent data presented in this report have been obtained from the USPTO Technology Assessment and Forecast (TAF) database. The TAF database is maintained by the Office of Information Dissemination Services and contains selected bibliographic information from patents that have issued since 1963.

Contents

This report contains statistical tables that profile patenting activity by U.S. colleges, universities, or associations of colleges and universities during the period 1969 to 2000. The tables in this report can be grouped as shown below. Please note that some tables may be included in more than one group. Numeric identifiers, placed in parentheses, below, indicate the Table of Contents section of the report that contains the noted table. Listed tables are grouped according to the hierarchy of the Table of Contents.
The following statistical tables include consolidated data that display the patenting activity of all U.S. colleges and universities together:

The following statistical tables include consolidated data for all top 100 R&D universities, together:

The following statistical tables include consolidated data for each top 100 R&D university:

The following statistical tables include data for all U.S. college and university assignee name entries. The assignee names have not been consolidated and multiple assignee name entries for some universities and their integral units may be listed in these tables.

The following files and documents also are included in this report:

Selection of Academic Institutions

Academic institutions that appear in this report consist of U.S. colleges, universities, and associations of U.S. colleges and universities that were assigned one or more U.S. utility patents between calendar years 1969 and 2000.

The selection of academic institutions is based on a search of patent assignee names that appear in the Technology Assessment and Forecast database assignee file. The assignee file is an alphabetical listing of more than 200,000 names of assignees whose names appear on the printed patents.

Only the first-named assignee on a patent is contained in the TAF database. This eliminates double counting of patents when distributions are based on assignee name. Thus, a search of patents assigned to academic institutions excludes patents with a first-named assignee that is not an academic institution, but with a second assignee that is a U.S. academic institution.

A comprehensive list of institutions selected for inclusion in this report is presented in alphabetical order in the attachment titled, 'Alphabetical Listing of University Assignees With Total Patent Counts For the Period' (Table of Contents, section 1C). Academic institution entries that are included in this report for the first time this year are shown below. Some of these institutions (e.g., CLEMSON UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FOUNDATION) may be components of larger academic institutions or systems that appear elsewhere in the report (e.g., CLEMSON UNIVERSITY):

Careful consideration should be given to the use of patent data to assess the inventive activity of a particular component of a larger institution or statewide system. A search of patents assigned to the University of California--Los Angeles, for example, might result in the identification of several patents with that assignee name. However, the assignee name that appears on other patents associated with the UCLA campus might simply show University of California. This situation occurs when the patent applicant or legal representative, who is responsible for providing the assignee name that appears on the patent, variously provides the name of the statewide system, a particular campus, or a foundation, institute, etc. within a college or university.

The lack of consistency in the format of assignee names can also pose a problem identifying patents associated with colleges and universities ranked in the top 100 according to R&D expenditures in FY 1999. The top 100 institutions in the NSF survey are not necessarily ranked according to statewide systems. For example, the University of California - San Diego was ranked 6th in R&D expenditures in FY 1999 and the University of California - Los Angeles was ranked 4th, according to NSF figures. As noted above, it is not always possible to associate patents with a specific campus or research center separately from the larger institution or statewide system to which it belongs. For purposes of this report, the R&D expenditures at all campuses of a given institution were consolidated into a single figure. Similarly, all patents associated with a given institution, its various campuses, known research centers, foundations, or institutes that are integral units of that institution were consolidated into a single patent count. No attempt is made to provide total patent counts for specific campuses or research facilities, and where they do appear, those figures should not be considered the total patent count for those campuses or research facilities.

Identification of Top 100 Institutions in R&D Expenditures

Academic institutions in the top 100, based on R&D expenditures in fiscal year 1999, are derived from National Science Foundation report, Academic Research and Development Expenditures, Fiscal Year 1999 (early release tables, Table 32). This NSF report, based on NSF's fiscal year 1999 Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges, depicts science and engineering expenditures for separately budgeted research and development at academic institutions:

The term 'separately budgeted R&D expenditures' includes all funds expended for activities specifically organized to produce research outcomes and commissioned by an agency either external to the institution or separately budgeted by an organizational unit within the institution. 'Expenditures' are funds actually spent by an institution during its fiscal year.

The names of academic institutions in the NSF report are shown in a table, 'Total R&D Expenditures at U.S. Colleges and Universities: Top 100 Institutions in R&D Expenditures in Fiscal Year 1999', available elsewhere in this patent report (Table of Contents section (1E)). The NSF report provides a ranking that includes specific campuses of statewide systems, such as the University of California at San Diego (U CA San Diego), which is ranked 6th in R&D expenditures in 1999.

However, it is not always possible to identify the patents associated with a specific campus; frequently, the name of a larger institution or statewide system-not a specific campus--appears as the assignee name on a U.S. patent. For example, a patent assigned to the University of California may or may not be associated with the San Diego campus. For some academic institutions in the NSF top 100, only patent counts for larger institutions or statewide systems can be provided.

The table, 'Total R&D Expenditures at U.S. Colleges and Universities: Top 100 Institutions in R&D Expenditures in Fiscal Year 1999' (table 1e in the Table of Contents) shows the assignee names on U.S. patents that most closely correspond to the academic institutions in the NSF top 100, and for which patent counts are provided in this section. No attempt is made to provide total patent counts for specific campuses or research facilities, and where they do appear, those figures should not be considered the total patent count for those campuses or research facilities.

Database Records

The TAF database includes bibliographic data items for 3.0 million U.S. utility patents issued since 1963 and 210,000 non-utility patents issued since 1977. While every effort is made to ensure accurate data for all patents, the size and complexity of the database prevent achievement of a totally "clean" record. The following points are noted.

  1. A foreign origin patent in this report is a patent [assigned to an academic institution at the time of issue] with a first-named inventor who resided in a country other than the United States.
  2. Patents assigned to U.S. academic institutions are considered U.S. corporate owned. Patents in this report that are classified as government, foreign corporate, foreign government, or individually owned patents are the result of errors in the patent record.
  3. Patent classification information in this report reflects the U.S. Patent Classification System (USPC) as it existed on 31 December 2000. At the time of issue, each patent is classified into one or more USPC classes of technology--the first class listed is known as the primary class (called the "ORIGINAL" class, in USPTO specific terminology). Frequent expansion and changes occur in the USPC to accommodate changing technologies. As a result, a patent may be periodically reclassified into a new class. Thus, the current, primary class associated with a patent may change over time and may not be the same class assigned at the time of issue. The distribution of patents by class in this report is based on the primary class, as of 31 December 2000.

Distribution of Utility Patent Data By Year of Grant and By Year of Patent Application

In many of the tables in this report, patent data are distributed by the year in which the patents were granted. In addition, many tables distribute patent data by the year in which each granted patent was filed (i.e., the year of patent application).

Distributing patent grants by the year in which they were filed can be useful in analyses of patent activty, It should be noted, however, that DATA FOR THOSE APPLICATIONS WHICH WERE FILED BUT NEVER ISSUED (ROUGHLY 25% OF TOTAL FILINGS) ARE NOT INCLUDED IN ANY TABLES IN THIS REPORT.

Data displaying patents as distributed by their year of application are of significant value since the date an application was filed more accurately reflects when the technology was developed. Additionally, fluctuations in patent data distributed by application date are much more likely to reflect changes in technological activity, since such fluctuations would for the most part be immune to changes in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) processing such as occurred in years such as 1986 when the USPTO issued fewer patents than would normally have been expected due to a lack of funds to print patents. Note that a patent's "pendency" can be quite variable from one patent to another thereby affecting the date of patent grant. Such variation in pendency is determined by many factors, including USPTO workload (which varies between technologies), budget and manpower levels, patent printing schedules, etc.

Since the average time period between filing for a patent and the issuing of the patent (i.e., a patent's "pendency") is about 24 months, the data in these tables for 1997 - December 2000 are incomplete. This is because a significant number of the applications filed from 1997 - December 2000 which will ultimately become patents were still pending in December 2000. Since they had not yet become patents as of December 2000, they are not included in these tables.

As of 12/31/2000, utility patent application data were approximately 99% complete for patent applications filed in 1997, 61% complete for 1998 filings and 19% complete for 1999 filings. They were essentially complete for applications filed prior to 1997.

Other Information

Analyzing the Data
Use of spreadsheet software may facilitate analysis of the data contained in these tables. Users should note that many spreadsheet software programs (e.g., Microsoft Excel) can import these tables directly. Check the spreadsheet software documentation for details.

Printing the Tables
Some web browsers permit acceptable printing of these tables directly from the web page. Also, importing the web page into spreadsheet or word-processing software may allow a user additional flexibility for formatting the tables for printing. Check the corresponding software documentation for details.

Summary

In calendar year 2000, the USPTO issued 157,495 utility patents, of which 3,087 (2.0%) were assigned to a U.S. college, university or association of U.S. colleges and universities. While both the number and percent of total patents assigned to U.S. academic institutions generally have shown a steady increase since 1985 (when only 589 utility patents, or 8% of the total, were assigned to U.S. academic institutions), the number and percent dropped in 2000 as compared to the figures for 1999 (3,340 patents and 2.2% of the total). The 3,087 patents assigned to U.S. academic institutions in 2000 represent 4.4% of the 70,884 patents assigned to non-government, U.S. organizations. (See the table titled, 'Number and Percent of Total Utility Patents, and of U.S. Corporate-Owned Utility Patents,' Table of Contents section (1B))

Institutions that received higher numbers of utility patents in 2000 were the University of California (432 patents), followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (113 patents), and Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology (both with 103 patents). The University of California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were also the top two recipients of utility patents in 1998 and 1999.

Technologies that have been emphasized in patenting by U.S. colleges and universities include biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. In the year 2000, disproportionately more patents assigned to U.S. academic institutions were in the following classes of technology:


PLEASE NOTE

The Technology Assessment and Forecast Branch of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) compiled patent data in this report, with the support of the Science Indicators Unit of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Use and further release of these data, in whole or in part, are permitted. However, acknowledgment of the source of the data and absolution of the NSF or USPTO from responsibility for any opinions or recommendations expressed in any document using or containing the data are required. The following language is recommended:
Data on patent counts appearing in this document were prepared under the support of the Science Indicators Unit, National Science Foundation, by the Technology Assessment and Forecast Branch, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Any opinions or recommendations expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Patent and Trademark Office.

TAF Contacts

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address of TAF Internet pages : http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/tafp.html
ftp download of selected TAF reports from : ftp.uspto.gov/pub/taf/

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Last Modified: 22 May 2002