Are two better than one ? Modelling the complementarity between patents and trademarks across industries

Patrick Llerena and Valentine Millot
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Valentine Millot: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

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Abstract: Intellectual property (IP) rights are a major component of firms' strategies to appropriate the benefits of their innovations. This paper aims at assessing the interactions between two types of IP rights, namely patents and trademarks. We first model the effect of these two types of IP rights on the returns of innovations for firms. Based on a supermodularity analysis, we then show that the complementarity between trademarks and patents varies according to the characteristics of the market. Depending on the levels of advertising's spillovers and depreciation rate, trademarks are found to be complementary or not to patents. Finally, based on a data set encompassing the IP activity of a sample of publicly traded firms among the top corporate R&D investors worldwide, we find that patents and trademarks are complementary in chemical and pharmaceutical sectors, but not in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sectors.

Keywords: Patents; Trademarks; IPRs; Complementarity; Supermodularity; Innovation; Brands (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02-07
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published in Industry and Innovation, 2020, 27 (1-2), pp.52-79. ⟨10.1080/13662716.2019.1688137⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03293540

DOI: 10.1080/13662716.2019.1688137

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