A 20% increase in the number of inventions by research institutions in Israel - the field that generates the most revenue: medicines

The survey, carried out for the council by the CBS, dealt with the activities of knowledge commercialization companies near research universities and government hospitals and research institutes.

A survey by the National R&D Council at the Ministry of Science that was published today found that in 2012 and 2013, 1,438 disclosures about inventions were reported to knowledge commercialization companies of research institutions in Israel - a 20% increase compared to 2010-2011. The survey also shows that in these years about a thousand new patents were registered, and that the knowledge developed in the research institutions led to the establishment of 72 new start-up companies in the last two years.

The survey, carried out for the council by the CBS, dealt with the activities of knowledge commercialization companies near research universities and government hospitals and research institutes. The role of the companies is to recruit, market and develop the accumulated knowledge in the institution, protect the invention by registering a patent and turn the patent into a commercial product.

The analysis of the survey data shows that about 70% of the disclosures were registered in the commercialization companies of the universities and the rest in the commercialization companies of the hospitals and research institutes. Out of all the discoveries, it was decided to protect 65%, which met the criteria for the protection of an invention. In the commercialization companies of the universities, the discoveries were mainly in the fields of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, physics, electronics and electrophysics and chemistry and nanotechnology. In hospitals the main field was medical devices and in research institutes - agriculture and plant genetics.

According to the survey, in 2013 and 2012 the commercialization companies submitted 967 original applications for new patents - of the patents submitted by the universities, most were in the field of pharmaceuticals (20%), biotechnology (18%) and physics, electronics and electrophysics (14%) ). The main areas of activity in the hospitals were medical devices (48%) and medicines (42%). The main areas of activity in research institutes and colleges are: pharmaceuticals (33%) and biotechnology (26%). Most of the applications for patents were submitted abroad and most (about 80%) by the universities.

"Despite the welcome increase, there is still a large gap between the many achievements in Israeli academia and research institutions, and the applied and economic potential of the knowledge accumulated in them for the benefit of the Israeli economy," said today the Minister of Science, Technology and Space Yaakov Perry. "The Ministry of Science is working vigorously to reduce barriers, and to increase government investment in applied research, with the aim of bridging this gap."

"The commercialization of research knowledge is particularly prominent in the field of pharmaceuticals, but it must be taken into account that a significant portion of the royalties in the field of pharmaceuticals rely on a limited number of very successful drugs such as Copaxone," says the chairman of the National R&D Council at the Ministry of Science Prof. Yitzhak Ben-Israel. "If we do not increase the investment in the field in order to bring about developments in additional areas critical to the industry, the industry in Israel will experience a severe blow in the near future and will remain in place technologically."
During the years that the companies have been working to commercialize knowledge, they have accumulated approximately 2,790 valid patents that have been marketed or are still to be marketed. The pharmaceutical field accounted for 23% of the active patents held by the companies, followed by biotechnology (19%), chemistry and nanotechnology (13%), and physics, electronics and electro-optics (12%).

According to the survey, the number of license agreements, through which knowledge is transferred for development in the company, that were in force or were active in 2012-2013 reached 1,966, most of them with local companies (71%) and some with companies from the USA (17%) and with companies from other countries others. 263 license agreements from which generated royalties in 2013-2012, of which 174 were with companies in Israel and 89 were with companies abroad. Here too, the prominent fields were the fields related to life sciences: pharmaceuticals (26%), biotechnology (20%), and agriculture and plant genetics (17%). However, fields of distinct interest to the Israeli hi-tech industry such as physics, electronics and electro-optics and mathematics and computer science together amounted to about 12% of the active license agreements.

The companies' income from intellectual property amounted to NIS 1,881 million, with the field that generated the most income from the sale of intellectual property being the field of pharmaceuticals (94%). This, while fields of distinct interest to the Israeli hi-tech industry such as physics, electronics and electro-optics and mathematics and computer science together generated about 3% of the income from the sale of intellectual property.

The survey also shows that in the years 2013-2012, 72 start-up companies were established in Israel and abroad, 57 of which were established by the universities, mainly in the high-tech field, compared to only 11 in 2011 - an increase of 5.23 times. However, the average number of employees in these start-up companies is considerably lower than the average in the industry.

In the field of knowledge commercialization, Israeli universities are the leaders compared to universities in developed countries such as Great Britain, the United States and Japan in all indicators: the number of invention disclosures, patent applications, number of license agreements, established start-up companies and income from intellectual property. Admittedly, in the last two years, the universities in Israel filed an average of 431 new patents per year, while universities in Japan filed nearly 7,000 patents. But dividing the number of patents in each country by the total expenditures of the universities on R&D in that country shows that the ratio is similar - 0.35 and 0.34 respectively.