Laws protecting free speech from 'bully' lawsuits actually cause companies to become significantly more innovative.
April 1, 2026
Original Paper
Legal Protection of Free Speech and Corporate Innovation
SSRN · 6502822
The Takeaway
Stronger anti-SLAPP statutes led to a 19% increase in patent applications. By protecting the public's right to criticize old or harmful technologies, these laws force companies to innovate and find better solutions rather than just suing their critics to protect their existing business models.
From the abstract
I show that legal protections for free speech foster corporate innovation. Exploiting the staggered adoption of anti-SLAPP statutes across U.S. states, I find that stronger speech protections increase patent applications by 19%, with effects concentrated in breakthrough patents and new technology classes. I develop a model in which anti-SLAPP laws raise the reputational cost of incumbent technologies by enabling credible public scrutiny, inducing firms with lower switching costs to preemptively