 The role of trademark rights expansion in the formation and abuse of market powerJun Wang and Xingyu Yan International Review of Economics & Finance, 2024, vol. 95, issue C Abstract: Trademarks play a critical role in the creation and abuse of market power, in the sense that when expansively protected, trademark rights yield legal advantages that can be leveraged to lock in consumers and raise entry barriers. But this role has long been underestimated or even overlooked. Based on empirical research and qualitative case analysis, we find that the legal advantages created by the expansion of trademark rights are a key factor in the formation of firms’ market power in product domains with a high degree of information asymmetry. In situations where firms have market power, the geographical and cross-category expansion of trademark rights can enable and rationalize the implementation of abusive practices such as price discrimination and tying. Limiting the anti-competitive effects of the expansion of trademark rights requires the combined efforts of ex post antitrust and ex ante regulation. Keywords: Expansion of trademark rights; Market power; Antitrust; Differential treatment; Tied sales (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reveco:v:95:y:2024:i:c:s105905602400488x DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2024.103496 Access Statistics for this article International Review of Economics & Finance is currently edited by H. Beladi and C. Chen More articles in International Review of Economics & Finance from Elsevier |
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