In the second half of the twentieth century, higher education institutions (ESR) were assigned “the third mission” with the expectation that they generate knowledge outside academic environments to the benefit of the social, cultural and economic development, especially in their local scope. Starting with the United States, governments in multiple countries have promoted technology transfer policies to foster the innovation induced by public research from the ESR (Bayh-Dole Act of 1980). Inspired by those reforms, France has introduced new reforms since the 2000s to change the role of the ESR establishments. It calls for a closer scrutiny of their real impact on local economic development. With this paper, we propose to fill a gap in the literature by analyzing how ESR research can foster local innovation in the French context. We select the laws « Research Schedule » (LPR) and « University Freedom and Responsibility » (LRU) of 2006 and 2007 as pivotal higher education reforms. We seek to determine whether these policies are beneficial to the local economic environment or not. The number of patents filed between 2000 and 2012 in French departments is used as a proxy for local innovation. Despite greater research capacity in the years following the implementations of those reforms, we demonstrate that technology transfer policies are not sufficient instruments to foster local innovation based on research carried out within ESR establishments. These results are similar to those obtained in the United States and Germany.