Publications
Below is a list of publications that use TM-Link data. If you publish a journal article, research report, conference paper, or working paper that uses TM-Link data, let us know via the button below and we will post a link to your research here.
Published papers
This article describes a new database — TM-Link — that contains 12 million trademark applications and registrations across six jurisdictions. A feature of the database is the identification of trademark equivalents (or families) within and across national trademark offices. Equivalent trademarks are two, or more, insignias for the same product applied for by the same company. Unlike patents, the incentive to file for global priority is comparatively weak since legal priority for trademarks is territorial. To identify the number of true trademark equivalents we therefore create synthetic links using a neural network-based machine learning algorithm.
Petrie S, Adams M, Mitra‐Kahn B, Johnson M, Thomson R, Jensen P H, Palangkaraya A, & Webster E M (2020). TM-Link: An Internationally Linked Trade Mark Database. The Australian Economic Review, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 254–269. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8462.12373
We study how trademarks affect reuse of creative works in the comics industry. As a creative industry, the comics industry systematically relies on copyrights. But trademark protection can also be exploited to generate income from the reuse of comic characters or to strategically exclude others from reuse. Our unique data set combines US trademark records of comic characters with information on reuse in print media and franchise products from 1990 to 2017. We find that, on average, additional trademark protection is associated with a reduction in reuse in printed comic books of about 19%. We highlight three mechanisms: first, the negative relationship between trademarking and reuse has been especially pronounced since the early 2000s, when the arrival of digital technologies lowered the costs of entry, promotion, and distribution. Second, our results are driven by less reuse by third parties, not trademark holders. Third, reuse is higher when trademark owners license comic characters to third parties. The negative association between trademarking and reuse carries over to franchise products, but it is weaker and tied to the era of digitization, with a 2% decline in reuse in franchise movies and 9% lower reuse in video games.
Kaiser F, Cuntz A, & Peukert C (2023). Batman forever? The role of trademarks for reuse in the US comics industry. Research Policy, Vol. 52, Issue 8, p.104820. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2023.104820
Book Chapters
We test for evidence that trademark families are being used by fabless manufactures to support their intangible business model. A fabless manufacturer is a business that designs, researches, develops, retails and/or markets a product but does not assemble or fabricate. We show that variation in international trademarking activity, after controlling for exports and outward FDI, conforms well to product complexity measures and existing evidence on the growth of both fabless manufacturing and production fragmentation in the USA (by State and by industry).
Petrie, S., Kollmann, T., Codoreanu, A., Thomson, R. and Webster, E. (2023) Chapter: Do trademarks assist global fabless manufacturing?, In Book: Improving Intellectual Property (pp. 277-288), Elgar Publishing, p. 277–288 www.doi.org/10.4337/9781035310869.00042
Research Reports
IP Australia has conducted research to guide how the Australian Government can support businesses to navigate trade barriers and expand their exports. The study looked at 9,000 Australian manufacturers. It focused on their product exports to 12 markets – the US, UK, Canada and 9 Eurozone countries – over 2005-2017.
Key points
After filing trade marks in an export market, Australian manufacturers:
Are nearly 3 times more likely to enter that market. Their entry likelihood increases from 0.06% (the average entry rate) to 0.16%.
Will earn 30% more export revenue if they are long-term exporters. On average, this amounts to $416,000 a year after filing.
Are more likely to expand their exports when the Australian dollar rises against the market, likely taking advantage of lowered marketing costs.
Will expand their exports more when tariffs fall, such as by deterring entry or marketing new products under familiar brands.
Falk M R (2021). Exporter responses to shocks: The role of trade marks. IP Australia Economics Research Paper Series 11. https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/tools-resources/publications-reports/exporter-responses-shocks-role-trade-marks
Working papers
Analysis of international trade at the sub-national region level is perennially hampered by the lack of granular data. We contribute a new analytic approach for understanding trade performance of sub-national regions using a newly constructed international trademark filing dataset. We show that international trademarks provide an indicator of regional export activity by analyzing US data aggregated to the industry and State level. Our new dataset shows more detailed information about exporting businesses than have previously been unavailable such as the company name, industry, market and location. It is therefore valuable for public sector export promotion programs as well as business seeking timely information about the behavior of their competitors.
Petrie S, Kollmann T, Codoreanu A, Thomson R & Webster E (2019). International Trademarking and Regional Export Performance. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3445244
Conference papers
Researchers and policy makers are concerned with many international issues regarding trademarks, such as trademark squatting, cluttering, and dilution. Trademark application data can provide an evidence base to inform government policy regarding these issues, and can also produce quantitative insights into economic trends and brand dynamics. Currently, national trademark databases can provide insight into economic and brand dynamics at the national level, but gaining such insight at an international level is more difficult due to a lack of internationally linked trademark data. We are in the process of building a harmonised international trademark database (the “Patstat of trademarks”), in which equivalent trademarks have been identified across national offices. We have developed a pilot database that incorporates 6.4 million U.S., 1.3 million Australian, and 0.5 million New Zealand trademark applications, spanning over 100 years.
Petrie S (2016). Linking international trademark databases to inform IP research and policy. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators; Valencia, Spain, 14 September 2016; p.298-302.
