Industry-university collaborations in Canada, Japan, the UK and USA--with emphasis on publication freedom and managing the intellectual property lock-up problem.

As industry-university collaborations are promoted to commercialize university research and foster economic growth, it is important to understand how companies benefit from these collaborations, and to ensure that resulting academic discoveries are developed for the benefit of all stakeholders: companies, universities and public. Lock up of inventions, and censoring of academic publications, should be avoided if feasible. This case-study analysis of interviews with 90 companies in Canada, Japan, the UK and USA assesses the scope of this challenge and suggests possible resolutions.