Keeping Secrets: The Economics of Access Deterrence
研究了秘密持有者如何通过保护决策来阻止他人获取秘密，以及秘密破解者的进入时机，发现即使保护看似薄弱，原始持有者也能获得高收益，这对未申请专利的创新者利润有启示。
Keeping valuable secrets requires costly protection efforts. Breaking them requires costly search efforts. In a dynamic model in which the value of the secret decreases with the number of those holding it, we examine the secret holders' protection decisions and the secret breakers' timing of entry, showing that the original secret holder's payoff can be very high, even when protection appears weak, with implications for innovators' profits from unpatented innovations. We show that the path of entry will be characterized by two waves, the first of protected entry followed by a waiting period, and a second wave of unprotected entry.