Intellectual property rights and university-industry technology transfer in Japan

Abstract

Japan's professors usually retain rights to their inventions, but some publicly-funded inventions must be transferred to government to then face obstacles to commercialization. This leads professors to pass inventions informally, with-out documentation or development or royalty commitments, to companies that have given donations and employed their students. The companies rarely develop such inventions. A new law to create technology transfer offices (TTOs) may fail because incentives to switch from the informal system are unclear, and some TTOs charge high membership fees, discouraging their use and limiting the pool of potential (particularly small) licensees. Unless universities can require faculty to assign inventions to their TTOs, Japan's best hope may be to eliminate compulsory transfers to government and em-power inventors to be effective transfer agents who can insist on contractual development commitments.

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