As federal research dollars decline and university budgets come under increasing pressure, university-industry collaboration becomes a hot topic at research universities. Some fear the influence of industry sponsored research, suggesting that industry interests negatively impact research scope and access to the technologies that emanate from such research. A recent article published in Nature titled “Industry-funded academic inventions boost innovation” (Nature, March 20, 2014, Vol.20) challenges these fears.

The analysis shows that industry funded research generates more patents than government-funded research and that those patents were more likely to generate licenses for the university. These licenses, however, are equally likely to be granted to third party companies as they are to be granted to the sponsoring company. Either way, the university benefits from increased research funding and additional licensing revenues. In turn, the sponsoring company gains insight into areas of technology that they most likely have little expertise. The whole research community benefits as well from the dissemination of information in the patent literature.