Mandatory corporate patent disclosures and innovation

Abstract

I investigate the effect of corporate patent disclosures on innovation. Using the American Inventor's Protection Act (AIPA) as a plausibly exogenous shock to corporate patent disclosures, I find evidence of the AIPA shaping innovation through two simultaneous channels. First, the AIPA encourages a firm to innovate by facilitating access to the scientific information contained in other firms' patent disclosures. Second, the AIPA discourages a firm from innovating by increasing the risk of leaking business-related strategies through its own patent disclosures. These findings are consistent with the view that corporate patents contain information useful for both science and business, and highlight their respective roles in generating both spillover benefits and proprietary costs of mandating patent disclosures. Finally, using textual analysis, I find that firms with high proprietary costs respond to the AIPA by strategically changing their patent disclosures to obfuscate exploitable business-related signals.