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"Don't let your employees do what you did"

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A 2001 paper by Moen begins with the quote ?Don?t let your employees do to you what you did to your former boss? which is presented as The golden rule of protecting trade secrets, as de?ned by Intel general counsel Roger
Borovoy (in turn citing Jackson; Inside Intel: Andrew Grove and the Rise of the World?s Most Powerful Chip Company; 1997.)

The 2001 paper of Moen is titled Is mobility of technical personnel a source of R&D spillovers? Moen acknowledges comments from Adam Ja?e.

The Borovoy quote also appears in a post on the 271Blog Study: "Tough" IP Enforcement Not Only Keeps Competitors in Check, But Also Your Employees citing to a 2007 paper titled Reputations for Toughness in Patent Enforcement: Implications for Knowledge Spillovers via Inventor Mobility The Moen paper is cited in the 2007 paper:

In the longer term, aggressive IP enforcement may alter the ability of the organization to hire skilled
labor. Moen (2005) and Franco and Filson (2007) find that individuals with entrepreneurial
aspirations often accept a reduction in pay to apprentice for the ?best? firms.

Moen J. 2005. Is mobility of technical personnel a source of R&D spillovers? Journal of Labor
Economics 23(1): 81-114.

A commenter on the 271blog said this of the 2007 study:

Nice example of another academic study announcing the screamingly blindingly obvious. What other correlation would anybody expect? Which irresponsible committee hands over the real money that shareholders have invested, to procure such findings?

A good question. One might also ask about the NAS/STEP study on patent reform.

See also
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/02/litigation-not-patent-quality-is-real.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 15, 2008 (boomark / email).