Competing on Standards? Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property and the Platform Paradox / Timothy S. Simcoe, Stuart J.H. Graham, Maryann Feldman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Simcoe, Timothy S.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Graham, Stuart J.H.

Feldman, Maryann.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w13632.

NBER working paper series no. w13632

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2007.

Summary:

This paper studies the intellectual property strategy of firms that participate in the formal standards process. Specifically, we examine litigation rates in a sample of patents disclosed to thirteen voluntary Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs). We find that SSO patents have a relatively high litigation rate, and that SSO patents assigned to small firms are litigated more often than those of large publicly-traded firms. We also estimate a series of difference-in-differences models and find that small-firm litigation rates increase following a patent's disclosure to an SSO while those of large firms remain unchanged or decline. We interpret this result as evidence of a "platform paradox" -- while small entrepreneurial firms rely on open standards to lower the fixed cost of innovation, these firms are also more likely to pursue an aggressive IP strategy that may undermine the openness of a new standard.

Notes:

Print version record

November 2007.