Trademarks as an indicator of innovation: towards a fuller picture

Leonardo Costa Ribeiro (), Ulisses Pereira Santos and Valbona Muzaka
Additional contact information
Leonardo Costa Ribeiro: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Ulisses Pereira Santos: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Valbona Muzaka: Uppsala University, Ekonomikum

Scientometrics, 2022, vol. 127, issue 1, No 19, 508 pages

Abstract: Abstract Encouraged by the emergence of a new and growing literature on the use of trademark data as complementary indicators of innovation, this paper strengthens the case for such use by offering both qualitative and quantitative evidence in its support. Based on two large trademark and patent databases built for this purpose, the paper makes the argument that careful use of trademark data can improve our understanding of innovation processes across all sectors of the economy. Our databases generate a high correlation coefficient between patents and trademarks in four different scales of aggregation: firm, sector, country, and global. We argue that the combined use of patent and trademark data is better at capturing the whole gamut of innovation that takes place in the economy than the standard patent data alone. We embed our argument and analysis throughout in the main structural changes that have occurred in the global economy since the latter part of the twentieth century. We find that in certain cases, e.g. in service sectors, in sectors where patents are not widely used, and in the case of exporting entities from developing countries, trademark data are better at capturing the extent of technological and non-technological innovation that occurs therein.

Keywords: Trademarks; Innovation; Indicators; Services innovation; Patents; Non-technological innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-021-04197-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-021-04197-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-021-04197-2

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().