Growth during the 1980s and 1990s in patenting and licensing by American universities is frequently asserted to be a direct consequence of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. However, there has been little empirical analysis of the effects of this legislation. This paper uses previously unexploited data...

This paper summarizes the results of empirical analyses of data on the characteristics of the pre- and post-1980 patents of three leading US academic patenters - the University of California, Stanford University, and Columbia University. We complement the analysis of these institutions with an...