Biotechnology firms are often created on the premise of commercialising the results of research carried out by scientists with heterogeneous careers and research trajectories. Patents filed by company founders provide accessible information on the appropriation of knowledge through the assignment of intellectual property rights (IPR).

In this study, we developed a new database of patents and publications by the founders of European, drug-originating biotech companies that reached IPO between 2013 and 2018. The founders' scientific human capital was analysed. We also developed a regression model to estimate whether the founders’ career trajectories, previous publications and patent characteristics explain the appropriation of knowledge by biotech start-ups.

Our findings suggest that founders' scientific human capital and professional experience influence the way in which knowledge is captured for economic use. Compared to patents filed by industrial inventors, those filed by academics and mixed career scientists are more likely to be assigned to an inventor's own start-up company than owned by a scientist's employers. These findings lead to fundamental questions about biopharmaceutical innovation regarding issues such as whether risks and returns are appropriately shared between actors in the public and private sectors.

创建生物技术公司的前提通常是将具有不同职业和研究轨迹的科学家进行的研究成果商业化。公司创始人提交的专利提供了有关通过知识产权 (IPR) 转让获取知识的可访问信息。

在这项研究中，我们开发了一个新的数据库，其中包含 2013 年至 2018 年期间 IPO 的欧洲制药生物技术公司创始人的专利和出版物。分析了创始人的科学人力资本。我们还开发了一个回归模型来估计创始人的职业轨迹、以前的出版物和专利特征是否可以解释生物技术初创企业对知识的挪用。

我们的研究结果表明，创始人的科学人力资本和专业经验会影响获取知识用于经济用途的方式。与工业发明人申请的专利相比，学者和混合职业科学家申请的专利更有可能分配给发明家自己的初创公司，而不是科学家的雇主所有。这些发现导致了有关生物制药创新的基本问题，例如公共和私营部门的参与者之间是否适当分担风险和回报等问题。