innovation. While previous studies have often considered patents and trade secrets as substitutes for one another, we investigate …This paper tests a number of hypotheses on the use and effectiveness of patents and trade secrets designed to protect … the complementary role of the two protection methods. We identify protection strategies for single innovation firms and …

We analyze the impact of the probabilistic nature of patents on the functioning of Germany’s bifurcated patent … indicate that 12% of infringement cases in which the patent’s validity is challenged produce such ‘invalid but infringed …’ decisions. We also show that having to challenge a patent’s validity in separate court proceedings means that more resource …

supplemental information on IP litigation and patent portfolios. The rich survey information regarding firms’ general innovation …We contribute to the economic literature on patent litigation by taking a new perspective. In the past, scholars mostly … focused on specific litigation cases at the patent level and related technological characteristics to the event of litigation …

Classical patent literature assumes that patents grant well-defined legal rights to exclude others from practicing an … and the certification effect of patents which signals the ventures’ “quality” to investors. If the decision about patent … invention. In this scenario, start-up companies benefit from the exclusive right to commercialize patent-protected inventions …

careers. We combine survey information spanning the inventors' entire careers and psychometric test evidence, with patent … of inventive performance such as inventor age and a broad list of applicant institution-, technology-, patent-, and …

of critical knowledge. Given that a patent specification has to include a clear description of the patented matter so … to patent law. This paper provides a model identifying the incentives for firms to deliberately obscure their inventive … knowledge in a patent specification. …

effect of temporarily mitigating competition, and the negative effect of mandatory disclosure of a patent application … patent are negatively related as opposed to common intuition, (ii) in industries with imperfect appropriability in case of … secrecy the extent of the technological lead is positively associated with the propensity to patent, and that (iii) the …

I analyse how patent litigation outcome in Germany affects the performance of the disputing firms by interpreting … the functioning of the bifurcated German patent litigation system: The separation of litigation and invalidity decisions …, resulting in invalidity decisions taking much longer than decisions on infringement, provides patent holders with a window of …

We compare patent litigation cases across four European jurisdictions – Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the UK … information at the case, litigant, and patent level for patent cases filed at the major courts in the four jurisdictions. We find … outcomes, the share of cases that is appealed, as well as the characteristics of litigants and litigated patents. A …