{"title":"Visibility of Technology and Cumulative Innovation: Evidence from Trade Secrets Laws","authors":"Bernhard Ganglmair, Imke Reimers","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3393510","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We use exogenous variation in the strength of trade secrets protection to show that a relative weakening of patents (compared to trade secrets) has a disproportionately negative effect on the disclosure of processes - inventions that are not otherwise visible to society. We develop a structural model of initial and follow-on innovation to determine the effects of such a shift in disclosure on overall welfare in industries characterized by cumulative innovation. We find that while stronger trade secrets encourage investment in R&D, they may have negative e ects on overall welfare - the result of a significant decline in follow-on innovation.","PeriodicalId":125544,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Intellectual Property (Topic)","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"9","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ERN: Intellectual Property (Topic)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3393510","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 9
Abstract
We use exogenous variation in the strength of trade secrets protection to show that a relative weakening of patents (compared to trade secrets) has a disproportionately negative effect on the disclosure of processes - inventions that are not otherwise visible to society. We develop a structural model of initial and follow-on innovation to determine the effects of such a shift in disclosure on overall welfare in industries characterized by cumulative innovation. We find that while stronger trade secrets encourage investment in R&D, they may have negative e ects on overall welfare - the result of a significant decline in follow-on innovation.