# Replacement Effect An economic concept describing the rational tendency of a monopolist to avoid cannibalizing its own existing products by suppressing innovation in adjacent technologies. Research by Watzinger et al. (2020) demonstrated that the 1956 AT&T consent decree, which forced Bell Labs to license its patents, increased patenting in affected technology sectors, confirming that [[wiki/AT&T|AT&T]]'s monopoly had been suppressing innovation through this mechanism. The concept is central to the thesis of [[articles/Bell Labs and the Distributed Architecture of American Power|Bell Labs and the Distributed Architecture of American Power]].