Visibility of Technology and Cumulative Innovation: Evidence From Trade Secrets Laws

Bernhard Ganglmair () and Imke Reimers ()

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: Innovation depends on the incentives to create new ideas as well as access to existing ones. Access, in turn, depends on an initial invention's inherent visibility as well as the inventor's decision to disclose it, for example through patenting. Compared to product innovations, process innovations tend to be less visible, making secrecy as an intellectual property strategy relatively more attractive; and stronger trade secrets protection laws could hamper their disclosure even further. Using exogenous variation in the level of trade secrets protection from the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, we show that stronger protection has a disproportionately negative effect on patenting of processes. We show in simulations that these changes in disclosure can have large implications for follow-on innovation and welfare.

Keywords: cumulative innovation; disclosure; intellectual property; Uniform Trade Secrets Act; visibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D80 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56
Date: 2021-05, Revised 2024-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp119

Related works:
Working Paper: Visibility of Technology and Cumulative Innovation: Evidence From Trade Secrets Laws (2024)
Working Paper: Visibility of Technology and Cumulative Innovation: Evidence from Trade Secrets Laws (2019)
Working Paper: Visibility of technology and cumulative innovation: Evidence from trade secrets laws (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_119v3

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany Kaiserstr. 1, 53113 Bonn , Germany.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CRC Office ().