No Underestimating The Value of Trademarks

That’s our motto here, but we live, eat and breathe trademark protection, so no surprise.

Our friends in the creative and design community also know the value of trademarks.

Love to see the bean-counters getting on board with this mantro too, a pleasant surprise.

In case you missed it, Tim Lince over at World Trademark Review did an interesting piece last month, entitled: “Groundbreaking study suggests trademark count, rather than patent count, is a better predictor of innovation.”

It draws from the results of a study called “Innovation Worth Buying: The Fair Value of Innovation Benchmarks and Proxies,” written by two professors at The George Washington University (James Potepa and Kyle Welch).

The World Trademark Review summary piece/interview definitely is worth checking out, in addition, here are some notable clips directly from the study, that sound pretty good to us:

• “trademark counts significantly predict innovation-related intangible assets”
• “trademarks represent an innovation measure much less covered in the literature, yet they have potential to capture innovation distinct from patents”
• “if a product or service is unique enough, trademarks enable a firm to protect the innovations deployed in delivering the product or service”
• “trademarks are significantly and positively associated with brand innovation”
• “trademarks are positively and significantly associated with innovation”
• “trademark count is a robust proxy for brand innovations but research and development expenditure is not”
• “trademarks are also a significant predictor of the market’s value of innovation”
• “AirBnb, Uber, and Netflix have transformed markets, yet patents don’t defend their core innovations.”

In addition, one of the authors of the study, James Potepa, also revealed in an interview:

“It is clear that having a recognisable name and an associated reputation is valuable, but our evidence indicates trademarks are able to pick up something above and beyond the value of recognition. Trademarks can actually predict the value of a firm’s expected future advances, which is amazing but not entirely surprising. In fact, it is worth considering whether trademarks are actually undervalued.”

Bottom line, we look forward for more and more scientific and scholarly research that will continue to validate what we already know to be true, the value of trademarks to an organization or business should never be minimized or underestimated.

In the meantime, we fully recognize that not all trademarks are created equal, so let’s do our part — as trademark types and marketing types — in collaboration, to steer trademark investments into inherently distinctive vessels with more potential for achieving great value.

The post No Underestimating The Value of Trademarks appeared first on DuetsBlog.