Applying patent survival analysis in the academic context

University researchers are commonly subject to formal evaluation of their ‘scientific productivity’ as defined by measures linked to academic publication. Comparative less attention is typically given to the assessment of their involvement in patenting. When this is done, the established practice is further to evaluate productivity using simple patent counts. This article argues the relevance of using more sophisticated measures of patenting activity, as part of assessments of scientific productivity. Specifically, patent survival analysis is applied on a sample of patent applications originating from Sweden’s largest medical university. This analysis finds that patent lifespan is correlated to patent, inventor, and assignee characteristics. These results indicate that patent survival analysis could offer a more information-dense representation of a university’s invention efforts longitudinally and therefore, add a qualitative dimension to the evaluation of academic research. This has potential implications for how universities involved in patenting and commercialization undertake internal evaluations, and how governmental bodies and/or other third-party financiers and policymakers design external performance assessment criteria. The results also point to the potential of combining legal status data with insights from academic inventors and patent owners to support funding bodies and university managers in resource allocation and for benchmarking purposes.