AUTM stats were developed to make visible the practice load on a technology transfer office. As Benoit Godin has shown with the formation of the linear model (misconstruing coarse unrelated categories of basic, applied, and development research into a chronological sequence) so also have the AUTM stats been used to justify a “lesser linear model” of research $ to invention disclosure to patents filed and issued, to licenses and income. AUTM even arranges the stats this way to play to it, with research funding on the far left and income on the far right (and thereby deftly moving in an excel sweep from socialism to capitalism, with an inflection point somewhere near “legal expenditures”).
Folks have come to believe that things work chronologically this way, and dedicate the management design of their operations to prove it out. It apparently could not possibly be the case, say, that research money comes in *because* there was an invention three years previously, or that a lot of patents are filed *because* there was a prior license….
AUTM stats reveal very little about the actual organization of IP management. AUTM doesn’t report the dollars spent on TTO operations, or on marketing of inventions. AUTM doesn’t have a place to report number of lawsuits in progress against infringers and licensees, or break out settlements as a separate form of income, or the costs associated with disputes as distinct from filing patent applications. AUTM doesn’t ask for the total federal funding directly associated with reported inventions (even though the grant #s are required to be reported in patent applications and therefore the information is at hand). AUTM doesn’t ask for gift $ attributed to open release of findings or student placement associated with inventions reported in a lab. And yet we find in the scholarly literature folks dividing the research funding reported for a year with the number of disclosures received in that same year, as if these two numbers *are related*. Gosh, those academics do the darndest things!
If universities were looking at how they participate in innovation activities, they would cast further, and be less desirous of owning everything that appears implicated. The crucial lesson of externalities. Yet everything about innovation has to do with externalities. This is not true for IP, generally, without working at it. No wonder a fixation on IP leading to money in general can be expected long term to work against innovation. Or, more nearly, suppress many forms of innovation driven by externalities in favor of a very narrow subset driven initially by a proprietary position. A similar critique can be had of “commercialization” of research through proprietary product development. If commercialization comes about much more often as a result of externalities arisinig in research relationships, then the last thing one would want is for universities to reduce their externality-generating capability under the argument that they need to manage their IP “better”–that is, own more, file more patents, manage these for income.