I assume you are talking about the costs of prosecution (application) rather than enforcement
(litigation). The former averages about $20K per patent; the latter is harder to estimate because
most cases settle; those that go to trial may average $10mm, and in specific cases costs may
reach tens or even hundreds of millions. See Bessan and Meurer, Patent Failure (Princeton 2008)
for data on patent costs v patent "profits" in various industries.
Mowery, Nelson et al, Ivory Tower and Industrial Innovation (Stanford 2004) include a table on
university patents/dollar of R&D spending for 1963-1993. This can be calculated currently using
AUTM 2007 data on patent filings and total federal and commercial R&D dollars: 60% of 20,000
disclosures filed, or 12K; times $20K each filing; divided by $48b total R&D expenditure (of which
less than 9% comes from industry). Alternatively, you could just look at the number of patents
issued to universities in a year, around 3600, and/or just at the industrial portion of the R&D
spending ($3.4 billion). As in industry, in academia the cost is considered an administrative, or
even marketing, cost, not an R&D cost. Costs do not include litigation. University patenting is a
reasonable way to look at this question because most early-stage research is done in universities
and licensed to industry; indeed, universities are often called "first-phase pharmaceutical
companies" because of this--and of course, pharma is the industry with the greatest dependence
on and benefit from patents.
Milken Institute does periodic reports on the costs of running technology transfer offices vis a vis
research spending--the return on tech transfer offices per dollar spent on resesarch, etc.
Jane Robbins,PhD
Senior Lecturer, Organizational Leadership
Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations
Vanderbilt Unviersity