Elizabeth Popp Berman's Paper 'Why Did Universities Start Patenting'

An institutional approach to University patenting: A Summary of Elizabeth Popp Berman's Paper “Why Did Universities Start Patenting” In the paper “Why Did Universities Start Patenting?” by Elizabeth Popp Berman, she uses 'institutional theory' to explain the rise of the university patenting in the USA. Recent Research shows that university patenting was on a rise since the 1970s and thus the impact of Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which gave universities the right to retain title to government-funded inventions, was less than what was generally assumed, Berman claims.
Berman uses the 'institutional framework’ to answer the questions- “why university patenting increased in the first place” and “what else besides the Bayh-Dole Act caused university
The passing of Bayh- Dole Act was dependent of on the first two phases as without the efforts to support university patenting in the 1960s and 1970s there might never have been an organized university patenting community, Berman argues. Yet , according to Berman, the first two phases were not only “necessary organizational precursors” to the Bayh-Dole Act rather each phase contributed towards institutionalization by “increasing patenting” and helped tot make it “more legitimate”, “routine”, and “taken-for-granted” (Berman). She argues that even if the “institution-building” had stopped after either of the first two phases, university patenting would still be more frequent than in the 1960s, and the tools would be present to continue the increase of university patenting.
Using the institutional framework helps in better explaining why the efforts to increase university patenting worked and to emphasize ways in which “state actors” contributed towards the development of university patenting, according to Berman. “Institution-builders”, according to Berman, are often those people who are in a position to “bridge diverse groups with complementary resources (Burt quoted in