Hidden in plain sight: QWERTY, the search for optimality and IP complementarity

The evolution of the QWERTY keyboard layout has been the subject of much debate. Prior discussions of QWERTY, however, have largely focused on engineering issues, while often ignoring the key competitive and intellectual property strategies surrounding the design. We argue that the keyboard layout QWERTY was a consequence of entrepreneurial mindfulness combined with a creative design rather than an accident of history. This paper also shows how complementarities in intellectual property rights protection played an integral role in the early development of QWERTY and helped to effectively conceal the source of the efficiency advantages that QWERTY delivered at the time. Finally, we suggest possible arguments why the QWERTY standard has continued into the modern age separate from a path dependence argument. This further serves to raise serious questions over QWERTY’s forced servitude as ‘paradigm case’ of inferior standard in the path dependence literature.