Protecting innovation: the exclusive and combined use of protection methods by French firms

Abstract

This study focuses on the decisions made by firms with regard to the protection of their innovative activities. The prior literature has tended to pursue two points of view which have seldom been brought together, emphasising either the separation of the various methods of protection or the benefits of combining multiple techniques. We strive to marry these two perspectives with a view to explaining the decisions made regarding protection methods. We examine four modalities: protection by informal means, patent protection, the combined use of these two techniques and cases in which neither of them is used. An analysis of data emerging from the CIS3 community survey is carried out. More specifically, we explore the uniformity of informal protection techniques. We then identify three factors which influence preferred protection options depending on whether the variables favour the exclusive use of informal methods, the use of patents either alone or alongside other techniques, or a combination of methods with no preference for any particular one.