Does the Chinese version of Bayh-Dole Act promote university innovation?

Abstract

The Chinese version of Bayh-Dole Act (BD for short) refers to the ownership reform policy for patents arising from government funding research grants. We collected the policies of 31 “985 project” universities from 1998 to 2015 to explore the impact of the Chinese BD. Empirical evidence suggested that patent applications, patent approvals, patent durations, patent citations, and profits from technology transfer of the universities adopting the BD policy had increased significantly. The BD policy encouraged more researchers to disclose and commercialize their inventions and to pursue global patent filing strategies. Compared with the BD policy, the incentive effect of subsidies, tenure promotion and cash bonuses were relatively limited.