Patenting at universities in the United States: A network analysis of the complexities of domestic and international university patenting activities

Important trends in international scientific collaborations involving higher education are emerging that indicate expanding interconnectedness between researchers. These trends have important ramifications for who is participating in the creation, ownership, and control of knowledge. While there has been extensive research on co-authorship patterns and scientific networks emanating from research articles in science and engineering journals, there has been very little critical analysis of networks created through patenting activities at universities. This dissertation analyzes trends in research involving the university as a locus and an engine of globalization through institutional and individual level partnerships. By matching individual level inventor data contained in the 2004 United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) PATSIC, CONAME and INVENTOR data files, I conduct a network analysis of 44,394 patents granted to 47,556 inventors at 326 U.S. universities, and 722 other commercial and international institutions between January 1, 1975 and December 31, 2004.;Among the key findings are that the institution network reached complexity during the 1995-1999 time period, and evolved into a scale-free non random system. This network was found to be dissassortative in that highly connected institutions collaborated with weakly connected institutions. Strong relationships were found between collaborative intensity, collaborative diversity, productivity, and impact of innovation as measured by citation strength.;The inventor network reached complexity during the 1990-1994 time period---five years earlier than did the institution network. This indicates that individual inventors are driving the growing connectivity for both the inventor and the institution networks. Here, highly connected inventors are observed to patent with other highly connected inventors making the overall network assortative.;The study of both the institution and inventor networks suggests that university patenting has not discouraged intellectual exchange. Likewise, the impact of technologies patented at universities in the United States, as measured by the number of citations received, has grown relative to other sectors producing patents. This indicates that basic science has not been harmed by university participation in commercial activities. This study makes visible the normally imperceptible social substrata of the international scientific community involved in patenting at universities in the United States.