Early Disclosure of Invention and Reduced Duplication: An Empirical Test

Much work on innovation strategy assumes or theorizes that competition in
innovation elicits duplication of research and that disclosure decreases such duplication.
We validate this empirically using the American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA), three
complementary identification strategies, and a new measure of blocked future patent
applications. We show that AIPA—intended to reduce duplication, through default
disclosure of patent applications 18 months after filing—reduced duplication in the U.S.
and European patent systems. The blocking measure provides a clear and micro measure
of technological competition that can be aggregated to facilitate the empirical investigation
of innovation, firm strategy, and the positive and negative externalities of patenting.