An investigation into the relationship between quality and commercialisation channel of university patents

We investigate how patent quality is correlated with different commercialisation channels for university patents. A dataset of 2052 university patents, including the market price of patents, is employed for the empirical analysis. We find that patents with more claims are less likely to be sold but more likely to be licensed, meaning that the decision of patent license is focused more on the patent’s legal stability. Furthermore, patents with more IPC classes and broader scope are more likely to be sold, meaning that the decision of patent selling is focused more on the potential of the patent to be used in different areas. The price of sold patents is positively correlated with the number of claims, number of IPC classes, scope, and family size, whereas the price of licensed patents is positively correlated with the forward citations they receive and family size. Considering the time effect of patent grants and patent commercialisation, pre-grant patents are more likely to be commercialised by selling them at a price higher than granted patents, and patents with more claims tend to be commercialised for a shorter duration.