By Scott Oldach of Patent Board™The Universities Patent Scorecard represents the universities and university-based laboratories
involved in patenting their research in all disciplines.
Universities are patenting a wide range of technologies; however, over three quarters of the
patents are related to the health care and high-tech industries. Biotechnology is the primary focus for
82 universities in the scorecard – comprising 32.5% of all university patenting in the last six
years. Other health care related industries hold top spots as well with Pharmaceuticals 2nd at
12.7% and Medical Devices in 5th at 7.7%. Holding the third spot for patenting is
Semiconductors at 10% with other high-tech industries such as Electronics & Instruments,
Information Technology and Telecom all in the top spots at 6.3%, 4.6% and 2.9% respectively.
Chemical related patenting accounts for 7.9% landing it in 4th position overall.
The top 10 universities ranked by Technology Strength in patenting – there are six
universities that have their highest concentration of patents related to Biotechnology, two in
Semiconductors, one in Chemicals, one in Medical Devices and one in Electronics &
Instruments. No surprise that Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
and California Institute of Technology (CIT) have the most patents in
Semiconductors, however they both have over 10% of their patents in Biotechnology, as well.
Number 1 rank University of California has over half of their patents in the health care segment.
The University with the highest Industry Impact score is William Marsh Rice
University, with an impact that is over four times that as compared to the rest of the
universities’ recent citation frequencies. So while they have the lowest volume of patents
they are influential, which is not surprising considering the majority is nanotechnology related.
Their top patenting area of chemicals accounts for over 50% of recent citation activity, however, a
medical device related patent has received the most cites from the recent year pertaining to the use of
“Optically-active nanoparticles for use in therapeutic and diagnostic
methods”. It is used for delivery of heat and the localized imaging of
biological materials. The delivery may be in vitro or in vivo and is useful for the localized treatment of
cancer, inflammation or other disorders involving over proliferation of tissue. The method is also useful
for diagnostic imaging.
When looking at the Industry Impact of the top 10, it is not surprising that Biotechnology focused
universities are lower than the high-tech ones as the rate of citation frequency varies greatly between
the two technologies. With Biotechnology having a much lower rate of citation than an industry
such as Semiconductors, on the other hand, one would expect the Biotech patenting universities to
have a much higher link to science, but the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has the 2nd
highest score within the top 10 and its highest patenting volume at 22.4% is in Semiconductors.
