Academic Entrepreneurship and Patent Licensing:New Trends in France and Lessons for/from the Chinese Academic System

摘要

Since the end of the 1990s, a lot of reforms affecting the French and Chinese academic systems and their relations with the industry have focused on two fundamental channels of Science-Industry relations, namely the creation of spinoff and academic entrepreneurship and the patenting and licensing. On the basis of a new set up national yearly survey, this paper analyzes the changes in the French academic system and in its technology transfers activities carried out through these two channels. Some comparisons are then made with China, revealing that besides a lot of differences in terms of legal, institutional and organizational settings, common features of the two systems are the importance of the public sector, the rapid development of spinoff companies as well as of incubators and science parks, and the large increase in academic patenting since the early 2000s. Some lessons are then drawn from the two cases.