Only 24.9% of patents granted in Poland between 2019 and 2023 were commercialised. The academic and research sector generates 68.1% of Poland’s domestic patent portfolio, yet accounts for just 1.1% of commercialisation revenues. Statistically, a patent held by a higher education institution generates revenue of just PLN 1,683. These are the findings of Poland’s first systematic study into the commercial fate of patents, presented on 17 July 2026 by the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland (UPRP) together with Statistics Poland (GUS) and the SGH Warsaw School of Economics. The data are unprecedented – but neither surprising nor coincidental.

The scale of the issue in three figures

The study covered 11,526 patents granted by the UPRP to Polish entities between 2019 and 2023. Of these, 2,868 patents (24.9%) were commercialised; the remaining 8,658 (75.1%) were not put to commercial use, while only 7.3%were earmarked for future commercialisation. As many as 86.2% of non-commercialised patents concerned solutions for which commercialisation had ultimately been abandoned – rather than cases in which implementation had failed. In other words, the decision not to proceed is usually made well before the technology is confronted with the market.

The sectoral breakdown shows where the structural disconnect lies. The academic and research sector, with 7,852 patents, generated PLN 44.5 million in revenue – just 1.1% of the total revenue stream. By contrast, the business sector, with 3,674 patents, generated PLN 3.88 billion, or 98.9% of the total.

Manufacturing, construction and infrastructure businesses classified under PKD sections A–F generate, on average, PLN 2.93 million per commercialised patent. For higher education institutions, the corresponding figure is just PLN 1,683 – less than the cost of filing the patent application and maintaining protection itself.

Moreover, the market for trading exclusive rights in Poland is virtually non-existent: of the 2,868 commercialised patents, only 51 were sold, while licensing and technology joint ventures remain niche solutions.

Diagnosis: the patent as a reporting metric, not a stage in the commercialisation process

This needs to be stated clearly: the current situation is not the result of poor decisions by universities or researchers. It is the consequence of an incentive structure embedded over many years in Poland’s grant-funding policy and in the system used to evaluate academic institutions.

First, there is the structure of funding agreements. For years, publicly funded projects treated the filing of a patent application or the grant of a patent as a performance indicator, failure to achieve which could result in financial consequences. In such a system, the patent became primarily a tool for accounting for project outcomes rather than a step towards the market. The UPRP has expressly confirmed the existence of a sizeable group of university patents for which the only activity undertaken after protection was granted was payment of the fee for the first protection period.

Second, there is the system for evaluating the quality of scientific activity. Pursuant to § 19(1)(2) of the relevant evaluation regulation, the mere grant of a Polish patent gives the evaluated institution 75 points – and a European patent 100 points – irrespective of whether the invention has actually been implemented or whether the protection remains in force.

Actual commercialisation is valued incomparably lower: 1 point for every PLN 10,000 of revenue pursuant to § 22(4)(3). The economic and reputational incentive therefore encourages filing for a patent, not bringing an invention to market. The findings of the study – 68.1% of patents but only 1.1% of revenue – are not an anomaly. They are the logical consequence of poorly designed incentives.

The system was not designed around commercialisation. Its objective was to satisfy grant indicators and accumulate evaluation points. The patents were created. The market was not.

The law provides the full range of instruments – the problem lies elsewhere

It is worth emphasising that the Polish legal framework itself does not constitute a barrier to technology transfer. Pursuant to Article 148 of the Act of 20 July 2018 – Law on Higher Education and Science, universities may operate academic business incubators and technology transfer centres for the purposes of direct commercialisation, including the sale of research results and know-how and the conclusion of licence agreements, while indirect commercialisation may be carried out through special-purpose companies.

Inventions are protected on the terms laid down in Articles 24 and 63 of the Act of 30 June 2000 – Industrial Property Law. The legal framework therefore responds to the actual needs of technology transfer. The challenge lies in making genuine use of those instruments and building an ecosystem capable of combining them into a functioning commercialisation process.

In practice, Polish universities and research institutions do use these structures on a statistically significant scale. The Agreement of Academic Technology Transfer Centres currently brings together approximately 100 technology transfer centres operating at universities, research institutes and institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences, while the Agreement of Special-Purpose Companies comprises more than 30 such companies.

The problem is therefore not the absence of technology transfer units. Rather, in most cases, the asset intended for commercialisation never passes from the parent institution to the dedicated commercialisation vehicle.

The 2019 report by Poland’s Supreme Audit Office (NIK), entitled “Special-Purpose Companies – Without a Purpose”, found that only 28% of the audited companies had received rights to research results from their parent research institutions as assets intended for commercialisation. The revenue structure of those companies was dominated by consultancy and training services rather than the sale of licences or research results.

In other words, the legal structure exists, but the subject matter to be commercialised does not reach it. This reflects the same incentive mechanism identified, from an intellectual property perspective, by the 2026 UPRP/SGH/GUS study: the creation of institutional assets as a reporting metric rather than as an economic tool.

The US experience: Bayh–Dole and the MIT model

A key point of reference remains the US Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 (35 U.S.C. §§ 200–212). Importantly, the objective of the federal legislation was not to increase the number of patents. Its purpose was to increase the utilisation of publicly funded inventions in the economy, support collaboration between universities and industry, and encourage the creation of new technology companies. Patents were a tool, not a metric.

A crucial element of Bayh–Dole, however, is not merely the allocation of rights, but its anti-warehousing mechanism. Congress expressly provided in § 200 that the system should “protect the public against nonuse or unreasonable use of inventions”.

This principle is enforced through § 203 and the so-called march-in rights, which entitle a federal agency to require licensing of an invention where the rights holder “has not taken, or is not expected to take within a reasonable time, effective steps to achieve practical application” of that invention.

Before the Bayh–Dole Act entered into force, the US federal government owned approximately 28,000 patents, fewer than 5% of which had been commercialised – a proportion strikingly reminiscent of today’s Polish figure of 24.9% of patents commercialised.

It must, of course, be acknowledged that the Bayh–Dole Act was adopted in an economic environment materially different from present-day Poland: one characterised by a mature venture capital market, well-developed industries capable of absorbing new technologies, and an established culture of collaboration between academia and business.

Nevertheless, the diagnosis that prompted Congress to act bears a strong resemblance to Poland’s current situation: publicly funded research was generating a stock of patents which, in the vast majority of cases, failed to find a route into commercial use. It is this similarity of the underlying problem – rather than any equivalence between the respective market environments – that justifies treating the mechanisms introduced by Bayh–Dole as a useful point of reference.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has consolidated this model through its Technology Licensing Office, which does far more than process patent applications. It actively manages the entire commercialisation process: identifying solutions with market potential, analysing possible business applications, seeking industrial partners, negotiating licence agreements and supporting spin-offs.

Under this model, the opening question is not “Can we patent this invention?”, but rather “Is there a market willing to pay for this technology?”. A patent is one stage in the process – not its culmination.

A signal of change: lawmakers and academia have recognised the problem

It is worth emphasising that the diagnosis formulated by the UPRP, SGH and GUS is not an isolated one. Both the academic community and lawmakers have recognised the need for a change in direction.

The proposed amendments to the Law on Higher Education and Science (UPRO11) currently being considered do not alter the commercialisation rules laid down in Article 148 et seq., but they do shift the emphasis within the evaluation system. The proposal would increase the importance attached to revenue from scientific activity, including revenue from the commercialisation of research results and know-how, while placing greater emphasis on the transfer of research outcomes into the economy.

It is also worth noting that key elements of the US model – utilisation reporting obligations and mechanisms allowing rights to be reclaimed where they are not being used – remain absent both from the current evaluation regulation and from the UPRO11 proposal now under consideration.

This represents a change of direction, not merely a cosmetic adjustment. It signals that the era of the patent as a reporting metric may be coming to an end – while the era of the patent as an economic asset is only beginning.

The actual effectiveness of the reform will depend on how far-reaching its implementation proves to be and whether it is accompanied by a corresponding shift in the design of outcome indicators used in grant programmes. That will be the real test of whether the change is systemic or merely rhetorical.

Strategic perspective: five questions every investor and entrepreneur should ask

For businesses and investors evaluating a technology, the study’s findings have a clear practical implication. Assessing the value of an intangible asset can no longer be reduced to the question: “Is there a patent?” The critical questions are those an investor would ask under the US model:

1. Does the technology address a genuine, validated market need?
2. What is its Technology Readiness Level (TRL), and how much work remains to cross the “valley of death” between invention and product?
3. Are the intellectual property rights properly secured, including in relation to employee inventions, research and development agreements and any potential claims by co-inventors?
4. Can the solution be scaled within a business model that is commercially realistic for the sector concerned?
5. Is the collaboration structure between the university, researcher, special-purpose company and investor designed in such a way that none of the participants has an incentive to obstruct the process?

The answers to these questions determine whether a patent becomes a revenue-generating asset or merely an ongoing cost.

Jabłoński Koźmiński & Partners supports businesses, research institutions and investors at every stage of this process – from patentability and registrability assessments for patents, trade marks and industrial designs, through protection strategies (patent or trade secret), registration proceedings before the UPRP and EUIPO, the structuring of implementation, licensing and IP assignment agreements, the establishment of special-purpose companies and indirect commercialisation models, to intellectual property due diligence and negotiations with industry partners.