Japan's universities fail to make most of intellectual property

TOKYO -- Universities in Japan fail to make effective use of their intellectual property due to a lack of support programs to link their research findings to businesses, with top schools earning just 2% as much from patents as U.S. schools rake in.

"We have an overwhelming shortage of staffing capable of drawing up patent strategies. We are given only millions of yen (tens of thousands of dollars) to verify whether study results can be developed into products," laments a professor preparing to found a drug development startup at Okayama University in western Japan.