The Implications of Incumbent Intellectual Property Strategies for Open Source Software Success and Commercialization

This dissertation investigates how IPR enforcement by proprietary incumbents influences open source software (OSS) adoption and production. It suggests user interest and developer activity on OSS are negatively affected by IPR enforcement particularly for OSS projects technologically overlap with litigated OSS and business projects specific to a litigated OSS platform. Second, it examines how royalty-free patent pools contributed by incumbents affect OSS product entry. It finds the pools related to a software segment will facilitate OSS start-up entry into the same segment; this marginal effect is especially large in segments with high cumulativeness of innovation or high patent ownership concentration.