We examine ownership patterns of German university-invented patents before and after the abolition of the “professors' privilege” in 2002 to explore how the legal change affected patenting activities. We find no evidence of increased patenting activities after the reform. Our data moreover...

University-invented patents are often not owned by the university. Empirical knowledge about factors affecting the ownership of university patents is limited and mainly focuses on patent characteristics. To study how the ownership of German university patents (2006--2007) relates to patent and...