Trade Mark Cluttering - Evidence from EU Enlargement

25 Pages Posted: 13 Sep 2012

See all articles by Georg von Graevenitz

Georg von Graevenitz

Queen Mary, School of Business and Management; Center for Competition Policy; University of Glasgow - CREATe, RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy

Date Written: August 22, 2012

Abstract

This paper exploits enlargement of the European Union as a natural experiment to provide evidence for cluttering of the trade mark register in Europe. Enlargement increased regulatory uncertainty for pharmaceutical firms because the number of medical regulators that had to approve invented names for pharmaceutical products increased sharply at the time. The effects of this regulatory shock on pharmaceutical firms’ trade mark application strategies are studied using Difference-in-Differences and bias adjusted matching estimators. It is shown that enlargement had a significant and quantitatively important effect on pharmaceutical firms’ incentives to clutter trade mark registers with trade marks they are unlikely to use.

Keywords: Trade Mark, Cluttering, Regulatory Uncertainty, Difference-in-Differences Estimator, Matching Estimator

JEL Classification: L11, L13, O34

Suggested Citation

von Graevenitz, Georg, Trade Mark Cluttering - Evidence from EU Enlargement (August 22, 2012). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2145588 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2145588

Georg Von Graevenitz (Contact Author)

Queen Mary, School of Business and Management ( email )

Mile End
London, E1 4NS
United Kingdom

Center for Competition Policy ( email )

UEA
Norwich Research Park
Norwich, Norfolk NR47TJ
United Kingdom

University of Glasgow - CREATe, RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy ( email )

10 The Square, Glasgow University
Glasgow, G12 8QQ
United Kingdom

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