Economic incentives to encourage university inventors to disclose their inventions to universities and participate in patent commercialization have been widely used in various countries. The law of the People′s Republic of China on Promoting the Transformation of Scientific and Technological Achievements, amended in 2015, stipulates that the share of profits to those who make contributions should not be less than 50%. Some provinces and cities in China raised the inventor share to no less than 70% and even up to 99%. The performance of increasing the inventor share in promoting the patent operation output of universities is in question. 
   Patent commercialization in universities is a complex dynamic process, which includes three main stages: invention-creation, value-added, and value realization. From the perspective of a dynamic system, this paper analyzes the impact of income distribution on different stages of university patent commercialization by taking US universities as samples. Meanwhile, this paper comparatively analyzed the influence of the inventor′s patent income and the scientific research expenditure on patent commercialization. 
    The main findings are as follows:firstly, in over 70% of the sample universities, the inventor′s income is not significantly related to the amount of invention disclosure; secondly, while in the universities that the inventor′s income closely correlates to invention disclosure, the inventor share has an obvious effect on the invention-creation stage, and the influence of the inventor share on the value-adding stage varies with the samples, but the inventor share has little effect on the value realization stage; thirdly, when there is a marked difference between the distribution base of patent income and the scientific research expenditure, compared with increasing the inventor share to increase the inventor′s patent income, increasing the scientific research expenditure has a more impact on the various stages of patent commercialization. It reflects that simply increasing the inventor share has a limited effect on promoting of university patent commercialization. 
   The possible contributions of this paper are as follows: firstly, this paper combs the influencing path of the inventor share on patent commercialization from the perspective of the dynamic system, considering the intermediate effect of the inventor′s patent income, which deepens the understanding of the role of the inventor share in patent commercialization in theory and practice; secondly, this paper analyzes the impact of the inventor share on different stages of university patent commercialization by applying system dynamics analysis method, which expands the methodology in the research field of patent commercialization.
    The main policy implications of this study are as follows:firstly, universities should refine the income distribution scheme and can design the inventor share according to the amount of patent income because the one-size-fits-all revenue distribution method cannot meet inventors′ expectations in all cases, especially when patent revenue is not high and the financial incentive effect is not evident; secondly, because of inventors′ different perceptions and recognition of various incentive methods, universities should make comprehensive use of incentive methods, such as honor award, career development, financial incentive, to bring into play the synergistic incentive effect of policies; thirdly, universities should further refine the patent income distribution scheme of stakeholders such as the inventor′s department to support the scientific research of inventors.