Measuring the quality of patents among Latin-American universities

Patents are essential for university technology diffusion to society; however, patent quality in universities, especially in Latin America, has been poorly studied. We create a quality index for patents granted to regional universities by using patent quality variables as patent production, technical relevance, use of top knowledge, technological scope, cooperation, and internationalization. Results show that, on average, Brazilian universities had higher quality than their peers in other countries and that Universidad Tecnologica de Panama occupies the first position of the ranking for 2016. The main contribution of this paper is to create the first Index for patent quality at universities in the region, and for what we know, the first country aggregated measure of patent quality for universities. This nobel measure is related to research quality in Scopus and Web of Science databases and can be used to complement international university rankings to measure a dimension not previously used by those rankings.

Automated summary

This study created a quality index for university patents by using variables including patent production, technical relevance, use of top knowledge, technological scope, cooperation, and internationalization. Results showed that Brazilian universities had higher quality patents compared to their peers, with Universidad Tecnologica de Panama ranked first in 2016. This index is the first of its kind in the region and can complement international university rankings by measuring a dimension previously not considered.