Actionable Disclosure in Patents: How Open Code Reduces Spatial Barriers to Knowledge Diffusion

Sergio Petralia and Ron Boschma

No 2611, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) from Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography

Abstract: The patent system rests on a fundamental bargain: temporary monopoly rights in exchange for the disclosure of technical knowledge. Yet, the complexity of transferring technical know-how often limits the effectiveness of disclosure, keeping innovation highly localized. We study whether actionable disclosure in the form of publicly available executable code can overcome these frictions. We rely on a novel dataset linking two decades of patenting activity in the United States to contributions in public code repositories by 1,556 organizations. Using neural language models, we measure the semantic similarity between patent descriptions and public code contributions by these firms to identify patents with high digital disclosure. We find that these patents attract citations from inventors located approximately 17% farther away than those citing a group of control patents, suggesting that actionable disclosure in the form of executable code reduces spatial barriers to knowledge diffusion.

Keywords: patent disclosure; knowledge diffusion; open-source software; geography of innovation; spatial spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O33 O34 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07, Revised 2026-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sbm
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