Sergio Petralia (Utrecht University)

Commiting to Innovate

Abstract. In this article I provide evidence of the strong synergy that exists between organizations’ engagement in Open Source Software (OSS) projects and their capacity to innovate. To do so I create a novel data resource that links patenting activity at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and OSS contributions in 47 GitHub repositories for 1034 organizations from 2005 until June 2023. These organizations represent a 23.4 % (974,804 patents) of all patents granted and a 24 % (883,137 contributions) of all GitHub contributions in this period. I use this information to show there exist a concurrence of organizations’ patenting and OSS activities by leveraging the timing at which patents were filed and contributions to OSS were submitted. I show that organizations tend to submit more contributions and do more file changes and line modifications in the GitHub repositories mentioned in a patent two weeks prior its filing when compared to different benchmark periods. These results suggest OSS initiatives are complementary to innovative process within organizations. They also challenge the notion that open source schemes are detrimental for innovation within traditional Intellectual Property Right (IPR) regimes.