R versus D, from knowledge creation to value appropriation: ownership of patents filed by European biotechnology founders

Biotechnology firms are often created on the premise of commercialising the results of research carried out by scientists with heterogeneous careers and research trajectories. Patents filed by company founders provide accessible information on the appropriation of knowledge through the assignment of intellectual property rights (IPR). In this study, we developed a new database of patents and publications by the founders of European, drug-originating biotech companies that reached IPO between 2013 and 2018. The founders' scientific human capital was analysed. We also developed a regression model to estimate whether the founders’ career trajectories, previous publications and patent characteristics explain the appropriation of knowledge by biotech start-ups. Our findings suggest that founders' scientific human capital and professional experience influence the way in which knowledge is captured for economic use. Compared to patents filed by industrial inventors, those filed by academics and mixed career scientists are more likely to be assigned to an inventor's own start-up company than owned by a scientist's employers. These findings lead to fundamental questions about biopharmaceutical innovation regarding issues such as whether risks and returns are appropriately shared between actors in the public and private sectors.