Analysis

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Introduction

Intellectual property commercialization is the process of transferring new technologies, in the form of products or knowledge, from the lab to the marketplace. There are various indicators to measure this process, for example: the number of institutions engaged in intellectual property (IP) management (Table 1-1), IP income (Table 18-1), number of inventions, patents and licenses (Tables 13-1, 14-1, 15-1, 16-1 and 17-1), and value of research contracts (Table 9-1).

IP management infrastructure

In 2007, 71% of responding Canadian universities and affiliated teaching hospitals (educational institutions) (80) were engaged in IP management, compared to 82% in 2006. ¹  While 83% of universities (55) reported being engaged in IP management in 2007, only 54% of affiliated hospitals (25) were similarly engaged (Table 1-1). ² 

Almost all universities that reported being engaged in IP management had IP offices (92%) in 2007. The number of universities actually reporting IP offices continued to decline since 2005 (from 62 to 51 in 2007), with the total number of IP offices in universities also decreasing (from 79 in 2005 to 59 in 2007) (Table 1-1).

There were 285 full-time equivalent employees (FTE’s) engaged in IP management, a 12% decline between 2006 and 2007 (323 FTE’s in 2006), with the 2007 estimate getting more in line with the 2005 number (292) (Table 2-1).

Total operational expenditures for IP management were $41.9 million compared with $42.5 million in 2006 (Table 2-1). Almost a third of those expenditures, that is 27%, were funded from IP commercialization revenues (compared to 17% in 2006), while 41% were funded from institutional base funding (8 point drop from 2006) (Table 3-1).

Income from IP

Total income from IP was $52.5 million (current dollars) in 2007, down 12% from the previous year ($59.7 million in 2006). Royalties again accounted for more than two thirds (71%) of all income from IP. The Canadian share of IP income rose from 14% to almost 19%, although income from “unclassified” sources continued to account for 40% of total income (Table 18-1).

Research contracts

Total value of research contracts was $1.2 billion in 2007, representing a 6% increase from 2006 (Table 9-1). The federal government sponsored a fifth of that amount while provincial and other levels of government accounted for a quarter of that amount, a significant change from 2006 (13% and 16% respectively of total value). In comparison, “other Canadian sources” (i.e. businesses and non profit organizations) and “foreign sources” (i.e. foreign government, business and non profit organizations) accounted for 25% and 16% of total research contracts value respectively. The “other sponsors” share of research contracts value dropped from 29% to 11% between 2006 and 2007.

Clinical trials accounted for 20%, or 245.6 million dollars, of the total value of research contracts (Table 10-1). ³ 

Protection of IP

The pool of discoveries and patent applications influence the number of technologies protected. From 2003 to 2007, the number of universities and affiliated hospitals that filed patent applications dropped to 59 (-8%), while the number of educational institutions registering copyrights dropped to 25 (Table 12-1).

In 2007, the number of new inventions disclosed to educational institutions remained stable at 1,357 while the number of new IP disclosures for copyrights increased from 547 to 2,038 (Table 13-1).

Meanwhile, the total number of inventions (past and new disclosures) to be legally protected by universities and affiliated hospitals continued to decline from 707 in 2006 to 668 in 2007 (-6%). ⁴  The total number of IP disclosures to be protected by copyrights fell by a quarter to 28 between 2006 and 2007 (Table 13-1).

Patent applications at various stages of progress (i.e. initiating and follow-on applications) rose 13% to 1,634 in 2007 (Table 14-1). Health professions and sciences accounted for one third of patent applications in 2007 while engineering and applied sciences accounted for 19% of patent applications.

The number of patents issued to Canadian universities and teaching hospitals increased from 339 to 479 (+41%) between 2006 and 2007 (Table 15-1 ), while the patent portfolio held by these institutions at the end of 2007 stood at 4,185 (Table 16-1), a 13% reduction compared to the portfolio held at the end of 2006.

Commercialization of IP

University and hospital technologies are generally commercialized in two ways: they are patented or licensed to established business organizations; or new companies are spun off from educational institutions. ⁵ 

Patents and licenses

Half (51%) of the patent portfolio held by universities and affiliated hospitals ⁶  (or 1,143) had been licensed out, assigned or otherwise commercialized at the end of 2007, similar to the situation at the end of 2006 (Table 16-1). Half of those patents were held in countries outside Canada and the U.S. (Table 16-1).

Educational institutions granted 538 new licenses and options in 2007 (+23% from 2006); they executed 2,679 active licenses and options with Canadian and foreign organisations (+31%) (Table 17-1).

Spinoffs

In 2007 there were 24 newly incorporated companies launched by Canadian universities and affiliated hospitals to commercialize their respective technologies (Table 20-1). This brings to 1,174 the total number of companies spun off by educational institutions to date (Table 19-1).

The regional distribution of spin-off companies remained similar in 2007 compared to 2006 (Table 24-1).

More than a third of all spin-offs created to date are built upon technologies directly related to health sciences (Table 21-1).

Among income sources associated with spin-off companies, disposition of equity holdings accounted for $3.7 million (-23% from 2006) while remaining equity held by institutions accounted for $34.8 million (-16% from 2006) (Table 22-1).