Fears for innovation as patent bids slump in region

The number of applications across Yorkshire’s universities was steadily around 200 per year from 2003 onwards, but in 2010 and 2011 statistics show the figures fell significantly to 147 and 133 respectively.

The 2011 figures are the latest available because details of patent applications are not released until 18 months after submission, but if the cause is the difficult economic climate, it is likely the trend will continue.

Laurence Brown, a patent attorney at Leeds-based intellectual property law firm EIP, said although the correlation between applications and the recession was significant, it was difficult to be certain about the cause.

“The recession will have reduced private funding for industry collaborations while the government’s spending review reduced the public finance provided,” he said.

“Either the budget is too tight to protect intellectual property – possibly losing the university money in the long run when research is commercialised – or, more worryingly, the funding for the research behind the patent applications has dried up.”

Mr Brown said it was possible that, as companies cut back on research and development in general, they have reduced their contributions to projects with universities.

However, he said that EIP’s data only showed those where the university was named on the application. It was possible that companies were becoming less willing to share joint credit for a project they had funded, even when a university had contributed to the research.

“We wouldn’t see it if a company filed an application with its name alone,” he said. “Businesses may be less keen to have joint credit than they were in the past.”

There are eight Yorkshire universities listed as filing patent applications over the last decade: Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan, Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam and York.

The most prolific of these was Sheffield University, filing a total of 622 patent applications from 2003 to 2011. Leeds University had the second highest figures, at 349, while York University was third place in the table, filing 317 patent applications.

Mr Brown said: “I think it’s interesting to see which universities are filing the most applications. It could be down to Sheffield being better at doing commercially relevant research or it values protecting intellectual property.”

However, even Sheffield’s figures show a decline in recent years, falling from a peak of 80 in 2006 to 54 in 2011.

Whatever the cause of the overall decline, Mr Brown said it could have a very real impact on the future of entrepreneurial activity across the region.

“There’s vast amounts of data out there and it’s hard to say how the reduction in filing from universities will impact on businesses rather than universities,” he said.

“But one of the things you see from universities filing lots of applications is new start-up companies coming out of those universities.

“Start-ups coming out of university research tend to be very high quality because it’s based on cutting-edge research. If there are fewer applications, there’s less innovation leading to those start-up companies.”

The decline in patent applications from Yorkshire universities applies not only to those filed in the UK, but in Europe and the rest of the world as well.

Mr Brown said: “EIP’s data shows a marked drop in total patent applications from 2009 onwards.

“Looking at the detail behind this, there is a significant fall in UK patent applications in 2009. This drop filtered through to European and International patent applications in 2010.

“These are usually filed around a year after a UK application so their drop follows directly from the fall in UK patent applications.”

Mr Brown said it would be interesting to hear anecdotal evidence from both businesses and universities about the recent trend, to see whether there was one main cause for the decline or whether there were several factors.