This empirical study investigates the hypothesized relationship between US federally funded university research and development (R&D) and its resulting economic impact, as measured by the level of licensing revenue generated by US universities. The author also examines the key operating statistics of the top-ten licensing income-producing technology transfer offices in the USA to determine what may differentiate them from their counterparts in other institutions and whether there are identifiable traits within the data that could be incorporated into a best practice model for the rest of the industry. It is found that there is a small but statistically significant correlation between R&D spending and economic impact. However, university licence income is found to be more a function of the system-wide volume of R&D funding than individual technology transfer office behaviour. (Contains 12 tables and 1 figure.)