UK universities spinning out more companies

The number of spin-off companies with links to higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK is on the rise, and institutions are growing the income they generate from  commercial research and licensing intellectual property, according to the sixth Higher Education-Business and Community Interaction report, published last month.

The survey claims also that the quality of spin-off companies is increasing, with the number of spin-offs that have reached their third birthday, rising from 592 in 2004-05 to 669 in 2005-06.

Formal collaborative research between higher education institutions and business is valued at almost GBP 600 million, an increase of 12 percent over the previous year, with the income from intellectual property and consultancy also rising.

The data shows universities and colleges are getting better at exploiting the intellectual property (IP) they generate, with the number of licences increasing by a quarter to 2,699.

Last year institutes generated licensing income of almost GBP 40 million of which GBP7.8 million came from overseas. Currently 9,000 active patents are held by UK higher education institutions.

In total, commercial business spent over GBP 300 million on contract research and a further GBP 115 million on consultancy in 2005-06.

A related report, the Third Annual Survey of Knowledge Transfer Activities in Public Sector Research Establishments, published at the same time, covers all publicly owned research organisations, including research councils and government laboratories.

This also showed increases in the number of licenses and spin-offs since the survey began in 2003-04. In 2005-06 GBP186 million was generated through IP licensing agreements.