Use of patents: empirical evidence from a survey of grantees of the European Research Council (ERC) (2024)

Introduction of the report

The “Survey on the use of patents by ERC grantees” was launched in November 2023 as part of an action outlined in the Annual Work Plan 2023-2024 of the ERC Scientific Council Working Group (WG) on Innovation. The objective was to analyse technology transfer activities of ERC grantees, including the quantification and analysis of licensing and other uses of patents (and patent applications) reported as resulting from ERC-funded projects.

Out of the over 12,000 researchers holding ERC grants at the time of launching the survey, the analysis focused on those grantees who declared that they had filed patent applications resulting from their ERC-funded research, (“self-declared patent applications”).

A previous study conducted for the ERC, “Assessing the Influence of ERC-funded Research on Patented Inventions” (Munari et al., 2023), published in January 2023, provided a comprehensive dataset covering self-declared patent applications. The dataset included 1,550 self-declared patent applications linked to more than 700 ERC-funded projects that had at least one self-reported patent application (in FP7 and part of H2020), out of a total sample of 6,671 projects. Each self-declared patent application in the dataset was linked to the respective research project funded by the ERC, including the project Principal Investigator (PI), the ERC scientific domain and evaluation panel, the Host Institution, and other relevant information.

The Secretariat of the Innovation WG at the ERC Executive Agency (ERCEA) consulted with academics who possessed in-depth knowledge and expertise on the subject, providing valuable inputs and suggestions on how to organise the survey and develop the questionnaire. This consultation was inspired by two large surveys on patent uses, PatVal and InnoS&T, and was instrumental in informing the design of the questionnaire.

The ERCEA team prepared a test questionnaire, which was sent to nine ERC grantees for feedback and input. Their comments were incorporated to draft the final version of the questionnaire. The survey was then sent out on 14 November 2023 and closed in the first week of January 2024. This paper presents an analysis of the responses.

The key findings can be found in this ERC press release (February 2025) and the examination of companies created or co-founded by ERC grantees, or those resulting from ERC-funded research in these examples:

10 companies supported by the EIC Accelerator, built on ERC-funded scientific research

Examples of ERC-funded research contributing to the creation and support of successful companies