Abstract
This paper explores scientists mobility behaviour when the trade secrets protection regime favours employees while triggering the risk of knowledge leakage to employers in the technology-intensive industry. Using a unique, comprehensive career dataset of scientists that links US inventors to tech employers between 1985 and 2019, we find that establishing an employee-friendly trade secrets protection regime negatively affects scientists mobility likelihood. These findings align with the theorising on the increased scientists' intrinsic motivation to perform in response to the reinforced possibilities of frictionlessly applying the acquired technological know-how elsewhere. We augment the research on intrinsic motivation, the strategic beauty of imperfect intellectual property protection, and the patent-based firm specificity measure of human capital in the technology-intensive industry.
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