The Impacts of National University Reform on University-Industry Collaboration and Intellectual Property Management in Japan

All national universities were changed into "national university independent agencies", autonomous universities, in Japan in 2004. This paper analyzes how this reform has changed R&D collaboration with industry and intellectual property management of the national universities quantitatively and comparing with private universities. The paper finds that the national universities increased joint R&D with the industry and contract R&D from the industry after the reform. These increases were larger than those of the private universities in many cases. The change in intellectual property management was more impressive since the ownership of intellectual property rights moved from the government to individual national universities. Dramatic increases of patent applications and licensing contracts are observed.