Most European countries have developed policies for disseminating knowledge from the universities to the broader society – or the so-called third mission. In addition there has been devoted large attention from policymakers on how universities can participate more actively in economic development. The increased focus on the university’s role in innovation and economic development has led to change in policy in among others Italy and Norway. We will in this paper study and compare the rational for the policy changes and their immediate effects. The question on who should be the owner of intellectual property rights to the invention, the professor or the research institution, has been the subject of a long debate in several European countries, and some of them decided to remove the teacher privilege.
Norway made in 2003 an amendment to the Act on University and Colleges and removed the teacher’s exemption. The last action implied that the IPR of the research results, which was previously owned by the researcher themselves, now is transferred to the university. Thus the university has the first right of refusal to all inventions that stems from university research. Italy chose a strategy opposite to Norway. To enhance technology transfer the teacher’s exemption was introduced in October 2001: the researchers are granted the exclusive rights of the research results and they file patent applications under their own names and inform their university. In 2005 a correction to the teacher exemption rule was introduced, stating that the rule does not apply to the results of research financed, wholly or in part, by private subjects or by public bodies different from the employing university.
In this paper we try to determine how have Norway and Italy interpreted and implemented the 3rd mission of the university and what are some of the consequences of the policy implementation. We study the potential incentive effect on university researchers’ rate of involvement in technology transfer activities due to the change of the teacher’s exemption rule. We also ask if the teacher’s exemption enhances or reduces the level of collaboration between university and industry and if a systematic shift as a result of the policy implementations is observable in both countries.
In order to assess the impact of the policy changes in both countries, we have compared some data and indicators, like the amount of extramural research in the business enterprise sector to universities; the number of academic Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) established every year; the number of reported declaration of inventions to the TTOs; the growth of academic spinoffs and the licensing deals signed with industrial partners.
We find that the policy does not have a direct and unequivocal effect on the rate of commercialisation from the academic institutions. In spite of the differences - both countries have developed infrastructure for commercialisations in terms of establishing TTOs and there has been an increase in reported outputs such as declarations of invention, spin-offs and licenses. As a conclusion one might suggest that it is the influence of international trends and an increased accept in the academic community for the 3rd mission that contributes to these changes.