Because they blossom in winter and display striking red and green colors, poinsettias are ideal for Christmas decorating. Yet, their market domination did not happen by chance. It resulted from more than a century of clever decision-making by the Ecke family in California. The story of the Ecke poinsettias provides a nice illustration of two major choices […]
Tag Archives | trade secrets
Mixing patents and trade secrets for complex innovations
By 9 October 2013 23
In our latest working paper, Francis Bloch and myself analyze the optimal protection strategy for an innovator of a complex innovation who faces the risk of imitation by a competitor. Complex innovations A “complex innovation” is an innovation that can be fragmented into a set of sub-innovations. Although the possibility exists to patent each sub-innovation, innovators […]