Continuation, complementarity, and capturing value: Three studies exploring firms' complementary uses of appropriability mechanisms in technological innovation

This dissertation examines the continuation application procedure employed by U.S. patentees in order to broaden our understanding of how firms use secrecy in their innovation strategies, and to assess complementarity among this and other mechanisms used by firms to appropriate value from technological innovation. The three chapters that comprise the body of my dissertation use a new data source, the continuation patent, to explore firms' complementary uses of appropriability mechanisms. In the first of these core chapters, Chapter 2, I describe the use by patentees of the continuation application procedure during the years 1975--2002, and discuss the effects of changes made to the patent laws in the years 1995 and 1999 that were intended by policymakers to reduce applicants' incentives to employ the continuation. I describe the motivations for patentees' use of the continuation procedure, present descriptive statistics with emphasis on the use of this procedure over time, and offer data on continuation uses as well as associated pre-grant application delay, providing evidence of substantial differences in continuation practice across technology sectors.; In Chapter 3, I develop theory and model complementary patent-secrecy strategies, using continuation patent data to empirically test several refutable implications. This chapter explores three questions elementary to our understanding of firms' strategic moves when using patents to capture value from discoveries. First, are there complementarities between patenting and secrecy that firms exploit when crafting their technology market strategies? Second, what drives the firm's choice of a patent-secret mix when developing a strategy to sustain to itself competitive advantage? And third, what are the consequences for the firm of one or another choice or mix?; I use available data on continuation patent applications to observe firms' choice of secrecy in their overall appropriation strategies, arguing that the continuation application affords the patentee a strategic opportunity to secure a more valuable secrecy than simple trade secret protection bestows. I create a strategic framework for understanding complementary uses of patenting and secrecy that supports my core arguments: The value firms attach to secrecy in appropriating rents from inventions is an important determinant of the use of continuation application strategies in firm patenting. By testing various alternative explanations for firms' use of the continuation procedure, I am able to demonstrate that secrecy functions routinely as a complement to the act of patenting itself.; In Chapter 4, I use litigation data to investigate the complementary uses of intellectual property rights by firms in the packaged-software industry. I take advantage of the fact that software, unlike other industrial products, is capable of patent, copyright, and trademark protection to collect data on firms' litigation of these rights. These data allow me to examine the enforcement by software firms of these different intellectual property protections, and the determinants of patent litigation in software technologies across a range of industries in which these technologies are used. Consistent with the other chapters, I also examine complementarity uses by firms of patents, copyrights, and trademarks, using litigation data for a defined set of packaged software firms.; Discovering how firms capture and sustain competitive advantage from their intangible assets is fundamental to our understanding of the strategic management of technology. With the growing importance of "knowledge" as a driver of economic value, unresolved questions concerning the role and effectiveness of different firm appropriability mechanisms loom large. My dissertation contributes to the literature a means, a framework, and empirically-supported hypotheses that enlighten firm secrecy strategies and the use by firms of complementary appropriability mechanisms in their inn...