Government Funding Increasingly Fuels Innovation

A new University of California, Berkeley-led study finds that nearly a third of U.S. patents arise from federally-funded scientific research, whether the tiny electronics that power our smartphones to the new medicines that keep us well, a surprising number of the ideas and innovations that drive our economy is federally-funded. The research also reveals that corporations have, over the years, steadily increased their reliance on federal funding for their research. The effect occurs across all fields; as the most extreme example, almost 60 percent of the patents in chemistry and metallurgy rely on federally supported research. Additionally, the team notes that patents that rely on federal research are more highly cited, renewed and novel terminology.

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