Variation in patent impact by organization type: An investigation of government, university, and corporate patents

This article investigates whether patents assigned to different types of organizations-firms, universities, and government research agencies-vary with regards to their effect on subsequent technological change. We find the organization type to which a patent is assigned to have significant and robust effects on the number of times a patent is cited and its generality. More precisely, we find that university patents are cited more often than corporate patents and that both university and government patents are more general than corporate ones. Additionally, university and governments patents are more likely than corporate patents to be both highly cited and highly general. The finding that university patents have a particularly deep and wide impact on subsequent technological change suggests that policies that attempt to use universities as engines for advancing technological innovation may hold promise.