It also encourages universities to collaborate with industry to promote the application of their inventions. Results have been overwhelming, with a marked increase in disclosures, patent applications and patents. Since 1980, more than 2,200 academic start-up companies have been formed, and by 1997 gross university income from licences had risen to 700 million. Their functions include filing patent applications, marketing patents to industry and finding partners to develop new technologies into marketable products. In Europe, the legal situation is not the same - and is fragmented.
Universities have different traditions, and employees' rights as inventors vary widely.
German university professors, for example, retain the rights to any invention, irrespective of external funding. False modesty These difference do not mean that Europe is not inventive, according to Manfred Schmiemann who manages several IPR-related actions lines within the Innovation and SMEs programme. The Max Planck Institute in Germany has earned 500 million from patents over the past 20 years. We may be different, but we are no less successful. They need to be cheap, defensible and practicable.