Editorial: why and when do firms trademark? Bridging perspectives from industrial organisation, innovation and entrepreneurship

Abstract

This editorial to the special issue on "Trademarks and their role in innovation, entrepreneurship and industrial organization" proposes a novel framework to understand why and when firms file trademarks. The three perspectives at the core of the special issue offer several insights on trademark motives but have not been linked for understanding the underlying strategies and contingencies. We propose to study trademark motives in relation to the firm and the innovation life cycle stage. Inspired by the framework, we outline avenues for further research.

Dynamics of regional diversification: a new approach using trademark data

“…This observed heterogeneity in motivation aligns with the observation that firm-level trademarking responds to the firm's perception of changing business cycles (Degrazia et al, 2019). Trademarking motives are also recognized to vary over different points in the product life cycle, different sectors and among different types of firms (Castaldi et al, 2020;Malmberg, 2005;Seip et al, 2018).…”

“…As a result, 'Firm-level trademark filing behavior [serves] to capture innovative activity and future of demand expectations for a relatively large and diverse number of actors' (Degrazia et al, 2019, p. 4). The literature indicates that firms are motivated to trademark for a number of reasons, including to incentivize investment related to the launch of products and to differentiate products (Castaldi et al, 2020). Seip et al (2018) confirm that major trademarking motives include securing market positions, appropriating rents and attracting investments.…”

Innovative events: product launches, innovation and firm performance

“…Conversely, Guarascio and Tamagni (2019) suggest that innovation-sales links are largely random, consistent with Gibrat's Law (Coad, 2009). Starting with Mendonca et al (2004), a more recent stream of work finds positive links between trademarks and innovation (see Taques et al (2021), Castaldi et al (2020), and Schautschick and Greenhalgh (2016) for reviews). These studies concentrate on start-ups, SMEs, and service industry settings (for example, Crass, 2020;De Vries et al, 2017;Block et al, 2015;Flikkema et al, 2014;Gotsch and Hipp, 2012).…”

“…While companies use trademarks more widely, including for non-technological and service innovations, it is still unclear which trademarks relate to innovation (Castaldi et al, 2020;. 1 Low response rates and small samples can limit the usefulness of innovation surveys, as do the widely varying answers given by respondents (Mairesse and Mohnen, 2010).…”

“…2 One newer strand of empirical work seeks to close these gaps with novel innovation metrics derived from firms' website text (Axenbeck and Breithaupt, 2019;Kinne and Lenz, 2019;Lenz and Winker, 2020), patents (Arts et al, 2021;Kelly et al, 2018) or regulatory filings (Saunders and Tambe, 2015;Hoberg and Philips, 2016;Kogan et al, 2017). These studies typically involve larger and/or listed firms rather than the SMEs that make up the bulk of the economies of more 1 Castaldi et al (2020) show that firms use trademarks for multiple purposes, including securing market position (allowing markups or deterring entry) and attracting resources (from venture capitalists and other investors). 2 For example, the response rate of the 2017 UK Innovation Survey was 43 percent.…”