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Chapter 5: Regulatory Framework Regarding Ownership of Inventions Conceived at Universities

One of the factors that may have an impact on the innovation performance of a country is the potential of universities to create value from scientific breakthroughs and technological inventions. This raises the question whether universities are in a legal position to convert research results into commercial applications. Indeed, for universities to efficiently engage in technology transfer, they need to have legal title to do so. This paper will, in a first part, describe the regulatory framework that currently exists in Belgium regarding ownership of inventions conceived at universities. In a subsequent part, the paper will compare the Belgian situation with legislation or practices existing in other major countries of the European Union as well as in the United States and Japan. The paper will conclude that, although research is increasingly conducted in cooperation with foreign institutions, we unfortunately lack a coherent regulatory framework that takes this trend towards Europeanization and internationalization of academic research into account.