Engineering graduate students’ views on the effective ownership of academic patents

For sustainable and effective innovation, who should own an academic patent obtained as a result of funded research? The issue of ownership can influence the motivation of academic researchers. In this paper, we address this issue from the perspective of engineering graduate students who have experience of R&D projects. We aim to investigate engineering graduate students’ views on inter-organizations aspects of patent ownership; and patent ownership policies within university. In this paper, we carried out classification tree analyses of preferred ownership categories, using various factors related to ‘researchers and the environment for R&D,’ ‘technology,’ ‘patenting activities,’ ‘sponsors,’ ‘currently existing ownership policy,’ and ‘compensation policy’. Our findings can help design an effective ownership policy that promotes innovation by incorporating the views of students who will be important asset for future innovation.