September 24th, 2025| 1 min readScience & Engineering

Technology licensing boosts academic productivity at Stanford

A new study conducted by economist Kate Reinmuth with the Stanford Office of Technology Licensing finds that inventors publish more academic papers, not fewer, after commercialization.

• Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing facilitates the transfer of inventions for public benefit.
• A study by Kate Reinmuth finds that licensing increases academic publishing among Stanford inventors, contradicting concerns about commercialization hindering research.
• Over 170 patented products generate licensing revenue for the university and highlight Stanford’s impact on innovation.

When university scholars pursue questions like the structure of a cell, they unlock new ways of understanding the world. Basic research, conducted without an immediate objective, has lasting value for science – and it fuels the economy. Discoveries that began in the lab include X-rays, the World Wide Web, birth control pills, mRNA vaccines, and Google’s search engine, to name a few.

But does the allure of commercializing an invention hinder academic research? In recent years, policymakers in the U.S. Department of Energy, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and National Science Foundation have questioned whether university technology transfer systems distract faculty from their core mission of basic research. Proponents of the current system argue that licensing makes inventors more productive and provides a vital channel for universities to deliver public benefits from taxpayer-funded research.

To understand this tension, economist and legal scholar Kate Reinmuth designed a study to measure the impact of technology licensing on scientists’ research productivity at Stanford University.

Her findings, detailed in the Stanford Journal of Law, Economics & Business (SJLEB), show that inventors who successfully license their first disclosure publish approximately 0.6 additional papers in the fifth year after disclosure, a 26% increase in average annual publications – suggesting that academic research and technology transfer can reinforce, not diminish, one another.

Innovation economics

As a Knight-Hennessy scholar pursuing a JD at Stanford Law School and PhD in economics in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Reinmuth took a multidisciplinary approach that combined economics, policy, and law.

“I think about innovation economics a lot because it’s how we drive growth,” Reinmuth said. “And since technology transfer offices are the main way university innovations diffuse out to the public, I wanted to know whether they help or harm academic productivity.”

Inventors who successfully license their first disclosure experience a 26% increase in their average annual publication rate.

Technology transfer agreements allow universities to license inventions from basic research to private companies, either existing companies or startups spun out of the labs. The practice dates back to 1980, when changes to U.S. patent law known as the Bayh-Dole Act granted universities the right to earn royalties from intellectual property derived from federally funded research. Today, most universities claim broad ownership over faculty inventions while also sharing royalties with the inventors.

For her study, Reinmuth used the Web of Science database, which tracks academic publications and citations for the past 60 years and contains records for more than 64,000 Stanford-affiliated authors. She then worked with Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) to identify Stanford faculty inventors, link them to their disclosed inventions, and measure the relationship between the two.

Technology transfer at Stanford

OTL’s stated mission is to promote the transfer of Stanford technology for society’s use and benefit while generating unrestricted income to support research and education. OTL associate vice provost and executive director Karin Immergluck notes that the university currently has more than 170 patented royalty-producing products in the marketplace, including novel drugs, diagnostics, medical devices, AI algorithms, alternative energy technologies, and advanced materials. These data do not include inventions for which patents have expired or royalty-free public benefit licenses. In addition, there are 105 non-patented biological material and research reagent inventions that are currently licensed only for research purposes.

“Our mandate is to get as many technologies as possible licensed to companies that will develop products for public benefit. We bring in welcomed discretionary income, but it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to Stanford’s research budget and operating budget,” Immergluck explained.

That said, Stanford has had some blockbuster successes, such as Google and recombinant functional antibody technology, which was licensed to four different pharmaceutical companies to develop therapeutics. Around 1,000 licensed technologies generate smaller revenue streams, bringing OTL’s total FY25 licensing revenue to more than $87 million. According to Immergluck, OTL’s philosophy is to maximize “shots on goal,” so most licenses are nonexclusive, often for the same technology within different fields of use.

With its location in Silicon Valley, Stanford has unusually high rates of invention disclosure and licensing. Still, Reinmuth believes Stanford’s experience offers lessons for peers nationwide.

Empirical analysis

Working with OTL, Reinmuth arrived at a final dataset of about 2,700 inventors. She analyzed their publication records before and after invention disclosures and applied econometric methods to account for subjective variables such as the quality of the inventor. Her results confirmed that licensing correlates with increased academic output.

“I was getting so much pushback on the benefits of university tech transfer from people who expected a negative effect, so to find a positive result was really striking to me,” Reinmuth said.

She added that the benefits of licensing extend beyond patenting to include industry engagement activities – such as industry contacts inspiring ideas for new projects and sponsored research – that arise from commercialization but are beyond the scope of this initial study.

Next, Reinmuth intends to explore emerging policies that affect technology transfer at the state level and to expand her analysis to other universities.

“OTL has licensing data that’s not often shared publicly,” she said. “It was amazing to work with them, and I hope my findings inspire other institutions to analyze their own licensing and publications data to see if the results hold true.”

Writer

Nikki Goth Itoi