Do Patents Enable Disclosure? Evidence from the Invention Secrecy Act
利用美国《发明保密法》中专利专员可阻止涉密发明披露的规定，研究发现保密令显著减少了后续发明（以专利引用和文本相似度衡量），且影响在保密期结束后仍持续，表明专利制度可能有助于知识披露。
This paper provides empirical evidence suggesting that patents may facilitate knowledge disclosure. The analysis exploits the Invention Secrecy Act, which grants the U.S. Commissioner for Patents the right to prevent the disclosure of new inventions that represent a threat to national security. Using a two-level matching approach, we document a negative and large relationship between the enforcement of a secrecy order and follow-on inventions, as captured with patent citations and text-based measures of invention similarity. The effect carries over to after the lift of the secrecy period, suggesting a lost generation of inventions. The results bear implications for innovation and intellectual property policy.