International Survey of Engineering Faculty & Administration: Trends in Invention Disclosure Report Filings

International Survey of Engineering Faculty & Administration: Trends in Invention Disclosure Report Filings

This 60-page report reports on trends in how often and it what areas engineering faculty and staff are filing invention disclosure reports, one of the first steps in developing university technology assets. The report is based on data from approximately 180 faculty and administrators predominantly drawn from the world’s top 50 engineering doctoral programs.

Data in the report is broken out by more than 10 criteria including but not limited to: engineering program rank, title of survey participant, field of engineering, age, gender, and salary level of the survey participant and other variables.

We asked: Have you ever filed an invention disclosure form or report with your college or university? 30.54 of those sampled had done so; 63.47% had not and 5.99% did not answer the question. Invention disclosure reports were most common in schools ranked 21-50 where 42.86% had filed one, and next common in programs ranked 11-20, in which 42.86% had ever filed one. For programs in the top 10 in the USA, only 34.48% had filed one while for programs ranked 51-100, only 28.57% had filed at least once. For schools past the 100 rank, 18.18% had ever filed and for non-US programs, only 15.38%. It was nearly three times more likely for survey participants in the USA to have filed one than those from other countries, predominantly the UK, Australia, NZ and Canada.