Co-ownership and patent filing rates in Brazilian Heis (2020–2024): Panel evidence

Abstract

This study investigates the association between co-ownership and patent filing rates in Brazilian higher education institutions (HEIs) from 2020 to 2024, aiming to assess whether formal collaboration and public funding jointly influence universities’ performance in technological protection after controlling for scientific output and institutional heterogeneity. Using an observational HEI × year panel design, the research integrates public administrative data from the Revista da Propriedade Industrial (RPI) and the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) on invention patent (PI) and utility model (MU) filings, Scopus data on scientific production, and FINEP data on public research funding. The modeling strategy employs negative binomial regression (NB2) with a log link and an offset of ln(Scopus + 0.5), including year and region fixed effects. An additional specification incorporating the interaction between co-ownership and funding was estimated as a complementary analysis. The results reveal a highly concentrated patenting structure, dominated by invention patents, and show positive bivariate associations between filings, co-ownership, and funding. However, in multivariate models adjusted for scientific scale and institutional heterogeneity, none of the three co-ownership measures exhibit statistically significant direct effects. A small yet significant interaction between co-ownership and funding emerges only for invention patents, suggesting limited conditional influence. Overall, formal collaboration alone does not increase patent filing rates once contextual factors are considered, and the national system remains concentrated. These findings indicate that improving intellectual property performance in universities requires coordinated strategies that integrate collaboration quality, technology transfer mechanisms, and effective funding environments rather than simply expanding the number of partnerships.