(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003-05-12)
Jensen, Richard A.; Thursby, Jerry G.; Thursby, Marie C.
We examine the interplay of the three major university actors in
technology transfer from universities to industry: the faculty, the technology
transfer office (TTO), and the central administration. We
model the faculty as an agent of the administration, and the TTO
as an agent of both the faculty and the administration. Empirical
tests of the theory are based on evidence from our survey of 62 US
research universities. We find that the TTOs reported licensing objectives
are influenced by their views of faculty and administration, which
supports the assumption that the TTO is a dual agent. The theory
yields predictions for whether or not faculty disclose inventions and
if so, at what stage, which in turn affects license contract terms. We
also examine how the portion of inventions disclosed at different stages
varies with faculty quality. Quality is found to be inversely related to
the share of license income allotted to faculty.