By SHEN Hui Jun; XU Ge; HUANG Can

Using data of patent licenses between Chinese universities and companies, this paper examines how development stage of the technology, the geographic distance between the university and potential licensees, and their collaboration experience influence the university’s propensity of licensing the technology exclusively. When faced with high risks, firms’willingness to commit requisite investment to commercializing the university’s technology will decrease. This study argues that the university can solve the problem through appropriate design of the licensing contract. Specifically, exclusive license can serve as a mechanism to increase mutual commitment, mitigating risks caused by technological immaturity, geographical distance and lack of collaboration experience and motivating companies to invest complementary assets, thus facilitating the university’s technology commercialization. Empirical results show that the early - stage technology and the lack of collaboration experience increase the university’s propensity of licensing the technology exclusively. Meanwhile，the negative relationship between the maturity of the licensed technology and university’s propensity of adopting exclusive license will be mitigated when the geographic distance between the licensee and the university is longer.

This article is published in Studies in Science of Science, 2019, 37(06): 1033-1042. (in Chinese)