Secrecy Orders - Publications - Faculty & Research

2019
Working Paper

The Consequences of Invention Secrecy: Evidence from the USPTO Patent Secrecy Program in World War II

By: Daniel P. Gross

This paper studies the effects of the USPTO's patent secrecy program in World War II, under which over 11,000 U.S. patent applications were issued secrecy orders that halted examination and prohibited inventors from disclosing their inventions or filing in foreign... View Details

Keywords: Invention Secrecy; Invention Disclosure; Trade Secrecy; Secrecy Orders; Cummulative Innovation; Wold War 2; Patents; National Security; History; Innovation and Invention; Outcome or Result; Intellectual Property; Policy; Commercialization; United States

Citation

SSRN

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18 Jul 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Cumulative Innovation & Open Disclosure of Intermediate Results: Evidence from a Policy Experiment in Bioinformatics

Keywords: by Kevin J. Boudreau & Karim Lakhani

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

the solution. In prior writings, we called this strategy “coring.”5 There are several examples. In order to solve the problem of how to build an IBM-compatible personal computer during the 1980s, which IBM tried to control as a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

24 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Do National Security Secrets Hold Back National Innovation?

widespread secrecy is understandably difficult, since by their very nature, secret inventions are hard to find. Recently, a researcher at Harvard Business School found a way to study this issue—by examining patent applications the US... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

10 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

Homers: Secrets on the Factory Floor

consequences of homer making seem cut and dried. But not so fast, says Harvard Business School assistant professor Michel Anteby. In interviews with retirees of the French Pierreville aeronautics plant, Anteby found, perhaps not surprisingly, a veil of View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Manufacturing

19 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 19, 2019

Patent Secrecy Program in World War II By: Gross, Daniel P. Abstract— This paper studies the effects of the USPTO's patent secrecy program in World War II, under which approximately 11,200 U.S. patent... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

A Better Way to Negotiate: Backward

Here's another bit of conventional wisdom on proper sequencing: "Get your own house in order first." Yet this was not the path that President George H. W. Bush followed in preparing for the first Gulf War. Instead of approaching... View Details

Keywords: by James K. Sebenius

21 Aug 2000
Lessons from the Classroom

Under the Magnifying Glass: The Benefits of Being a Case Study

process. In a typical scenario, there is, of course, the systematic collection of data in order to learn about a company in detail. Then a dialogue needed to be established with the managers. The resulting conversations and interviews... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

01 Oct 2002
News

Books

perceived to be of equal or higher status of the departed CEO. Without skill-based criteria, and with minimal information due to the cloak-and-dagger secrecy necessary when interviewing high-profile, employed candidates amid press... View Details

16 Jul 2013
First Look

First Look: July 16

intermediate results or, alternatively, one of closed secrecy around intermediate solutions. We observe the cumulative innovation process in each regime with fine-grained measures and are able to derive inferences with a series of... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

Publications