The Choice between Formal and Informal Intellectual Property: A Review
By Bronwyn H Hall, C. Helmers, M. Rogers, Vania Sena. 2014
479 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We survey the economic literature, both theoretical and empirical, on the choice of intellectual property protection by firms. Our focus is on the trade-offs between using patents and disclosing versus the use of secrecy, although we also look briefly at the use of other means of formal intellectual property protection.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management of Technology and Innovation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3c56a93af9a838f0aab963a81ebf3f132ca7314f
How researchers see this paper
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In Economics and Econometrics
- James R. Brown
- P. Robson
- Gustav Martinsson
- Bruce C. Petersen
- Boris Lokshin
- Panos Desyllas
- Mark Freel
- G. Nicodème
In Management of Technology and Innovation
- P. Robson
- Gustav Martinsson
- G. Nicodème
- Panos Desyllas
- Boris Lokshin
- James R. Brown
- Bruce C. Petersen
- Salvador Barrios
Citations in the corpus
- Depreciation of Business R&D Capital (2018, unknown): “Given the fact that firms’ propensities to patent vary across industries and technology areas, the patent renewal approach cannot capture all innovation activities (Hall et al. , 2014).”
- Patent Boxes Design, Patents Location and Local R&D (2015, background): “Firms can combine formal (patents, copyrights, trademarks) and informal (secrecy, lead times) means of appropriation and treat them as complements to protect different elements of their innovation (Hall et al., 2013; Hall et al., 2014).”
- Innovation collaboration and appropriability by knowledge-intensive business services firms (2016, background): “Although patents have been the main focus of attention on debates on innovation incentives, these tend to be the least emphasised appropriability mechanisms in most manufacturing sectors, with firms emphasising more heavily secrecy and lead-time advantages (Cohen et al., 2000; Hall et al., 2014; Lei”
- Appropriation strategies and open innovation in SMEs (2016, background): “Aggregating data from the third, fourth and fifth waves of the UK IS, Hall et al. (2011) show that only 22% of firms use any formal IP protections (with only 16% using patents), while almost 34% used at least one informal mechanism (around 32% used secrecy).”
- Formal and informal appropriation mechanisms: The role of openness and innovativeness (2016, methodology): “Finally, the analysis includes a set industry dummies (14 at the 2-digit industry level) as the need for formal appropriation mechanisms may differ across industries and across years (Hall et al., 2014).”
- What promotes R&D? Comparative evidence from around the world (2017, background): “9 For more thorough discussions of the various issues associated with stronger IP protection, see Mansfield (1986b), Hall (2002), and Hall et al. (2014).”