Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the instrumental role that copyright and trademark enforcement strength plays in stimulating licensing flows in 21 countries.

In so doing, panel data methodology serves as the empirical platform upon which the investigation between the trademark and copyright enforcement strength levels of 21 countries and the choice between unaffiliated and affiliated licensing of US firms for the period 1998-2011 is conducted.

The evidence suggests that both copyright and trademark enforcement strength have a highly significant effect on licensing and, more specifically, that stronger levels of enforcement stimulate higher levels of unaffiliated licensing.

The authors use the two longitudinal indices of copyright and trademark enforcement strength which capture the effectiveness and efficiency with which copyrights and trademarks are enforced in 21 countries.

This article presents a study of the trademark lawsuits in Singapore involving the Polo/Lauren Company, L.P. (“PRL”) in their attempts to stop various competitors and businesses from using the word “polo” and/or a device of a polo player. Hitherto, there has not been any concerted study of these lawsuits that seeks to analyse the legal principles underpinning the case judgements and translate them into actionable marketing insights using both legal and marketing perspectives. Applying both of such perspectives through the domains of trademark law, consumer attitudes towards counterfeiting and marketing perspectives, such as targeting, promotion and pricing strategies, this article will distill practical and managerial implications for marketers in the luxury brand industry.

An interdisciplinary approach is adopted, using both legal and marketing frameworks to analyse the decisions, reasoning and implications from the PRL trademark lawsuits.

There are key practical considerations for marketers and luxury brand managers to consider, both at the conception and during the life cycle of the luxury brand, in order to optimise the level of legal protection under the trademark regime. These include the use of invented words and imaginary content in trademarks, exercising a balancing of various considerations in the use of “composite marks”, and the selection of market pricing, promotion and distribution strategies, which are elaborated in the article.

Given the commonality of the subject matter involved in the trademark lawsuits involving PRL (i.e. the use of the word “polo” and/or the device of a polo player), this study has chosen to focus only on these lawsuits in the context of the Singapore market, and based on Singapore's legal framework, to glean thematic and practical insights. Further studies based on other types of businesses, geographical markets and legal frameworks could be explored to form a better basis for the applicability and comparability of the findings.

While there have been case studies and analyses performed on some of the individual PRL trademark lawsuits around the world, this will be the first study to look at the series of Singapore PRL lawsuits in a holistic and interdisciplinary perspective.

The practice of an interscholastic athletic department reproducing the logo of a collegiate team for its own use is becoming increasingly visible. In response to this growth, many collegiate licensing departments have begun actively enforcing zero-tolerance policies that prohibit third parties from using their respective colleges’ trademarks. Conversely, other institutions have exercised discretion by allowing high school programs to use their athletic departments’ logos only after receiving assurances from the high school that it will adhere to strict usage guidelines. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper provides a thorough discussion on the concept of brand dilution and its application to sport. More specifically the study gives an account of the strategies employed by trademark specialists to protect (and in some cases, enhance) the equity of their brands. To identify these strategies, a qualitative questionnaire was employed, which was completed by 13 brand managers representing institutions from the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 Conference, Big Ten Conference, Mid-American Conference, Missouri Valley Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and the Southeastern Conference.

Qualitative questionnaire responses from collegiate brand managers suggest that licensing departments differ in their perceptions of the outcomes associated with allowing logo replication in high school athletic departments.

Perceived consequences of two enforcement strategies – prohibitive and cooperative – are highlighted, as are implications and directions for future research.

Globalization should provide firms with an opportunity to leverage their know-how and reputation across countries to create value. However, it remains challenging for them to actually capture that value using traditional Intellectual Property (IP) tools. In this paper, we document the strong growth in patents, trademarks, and industrial designs used by firms to protect their IP globally. We then show that IP protection remains fragmented; the quality of IP applications might be questionable; and developing a comprehensive IP footprint worldwide is very costly. Growing numbers of applications are causing backlogs and delays in numerous Patent and Trademarks Offices and litigation over IP rights is expensive, with an uncertain outcome. Moreover, local governments can succeed in transferring value to local firms and influencing global market positions by using IP laws and other regulations. In essence, the analysis shows a global IP environment that leaves much to be desired. Despite these challenges, there are successful strategies to capture value from know-how and reputation by leveraging an array of IP tools. These strategies have important implications for management practice, as we discuss in our concluding section. Global companies will need to organize cross-functional value capture teams focused on appropriating value from their know-how and reputation by combining different institutional, market, and nonmarket tools, depending on the institutional and business environment in a particular region.

For this study, the Jordan case provided the context for investigating Chinese trademark law with the purpose of answering how and why Jordan lost the legal rights to the Chinese version of his name in China. The results from that investigation were used to better explain the phenomena of transliteration and trademark squatting in relation to sport brands and athletes. The purpose of this paper is to formulate suggestions for protecting sport brands and athletes from trademark squatting in China.

The authors used traditional legal methodology to investigate the influence of transliteration on trademark squatting in China based on the real-life context provided by the facts in Jordan. First, all reported materials from Chinese courts on the Jordan case were collected and analyzed by the research team, which included an investigator who is fluent in Chinese. Second, the authors conducted a collection, review, and analysis of China’s trademark law, the international trademark law that controls court decisions in China, and the literature on trademark squatting in China. The results from the investigations were used to formulate a description of Jordan that details how the process of transliteration facilitates trademark squatting in China.

The findings revealed a loophole within the Chinese administration of trademark regulation through which trademark squatters use the process of transliteration to infringe on trademark rights belonging to senior, foreign brands. Furthermore, the findings lead us to suggest that sport brands are particularly vulnerable to this type of trademark squatting in China. In Jordan, Qiaodan Sports exploited the transliteration loophole to obtain trademark ownership of Qiaodan to the detriment of Brand Jordan and, to a lesser extent, Chinese consumers.

This study contributes to the literature by conceptualizing a “transliteration loophole” that facilitates trademark squatting in China. Further, this is the first study to focus on how the concepts of transliteration and trademark squatting influence celebrity athletes and sport brands.

For foreign celebrity athletes and sport brands, the case should alert them of their vulnerability to trademark squatting of transliterations assigned to them by sport broadcasters or sport consumers in China. For instructors of sport law and sport marketing courses, the Jordan case provides teachable lessons on the value of trademark, the process of trademark squatting, and the process of transliteration and its relation to trademark squatting in China.

Socially, studies in trademark squatting and Chinese trademark law are needed as China continues to expand its intellectual property regulations. The People’s Republic of China started regulating trademarks in the 1980s and since then, there have been three major modifications. Still, controversies exist in terms of trademark squatting of foreign brands and research is needed to better understand why this happens, and how it can be avoided.

The focus on sport as well as the suggestions offered for sport brands and celebrity athletes makes this study the first of its kind within the literature on trademark squatting in China. The importance and impact of the Jordan case is one that attracts attention and should result in significant impact in the literature and practical impact for the field.

This paper aims to discuss the early brand protection efforts of Coca‐Cola.

The paper examines the hundreds of trademark infringement challenges brought by Coca‐Cola in courts and before the US Patent and Trademark Office and develops a tripartite system of categorizing these challenges by primary legal issue.

Coca‐Cola developed several innovations in brand identity protection including challenges to a wide variety of similar names, logos and packaging, the use of detectives in service settings and the use of consumer psychological evidence in legal proceedings. Ultimately, it protected it name against those rivals that closely imitated both words in its name or words similar to Coca or Coke. However, it was unable to obtain exclusive rights to the word cola which became the generic designation for such drinks.

Even today, the scope of Coca‐Cola's brand protection efforts provide a useful model for modern brands. This work also presents and summarizes important historical data.

This study examines Coca‐Cola's brand protection efforts and legal challenges in much greater detail than previous historical works on Coca‐Cola.

This paper aims to apply a broader perspective of branding to foster new insights and develop strategies to address product counterfeiting.

A review of the counterfeiting and branding literature leads to the development of a new conceptual framework that incorporates proactive, collaborative processes, in addition to the traditional product branding approach.

The integrative framework provides a basis to develop innovative, proactive strategies that complement traditional branding approaches to address product counterfeiting. The complexity of an integrative framework (or network) offers more opportunities for the firm to co-create robust meaning with multiple stakeholders. Identity elements are readily copied, whereas meanings are not. These strategies help to control counterfeiting by developing deep and inimitable relationships between managers and other stakeholders in a marketing network.

A research agenda is proposed to structure future studies on counterfeiting.

The framework outlines how to leverage collaboration between managers and brand stakeholders to complement conventional approaches to control counterfeiting based on traditional product branding.

This paper contributes to the growing body of counterfeiting and brand protection literature by adapting and applying contemporary integrative branding concepts, leading to novel strategies to address the issue.

This chapter reviews the economics literature on the development aspects of a substantially strengthened global regime of intellectual property rights (IPR). In this regime developing countries must adopt tighter standards governing patents, copyrights, and related policies, in order to protect global innovation. Some analytical literature finds that these changes could improve prospects for technology flows to poor countries, helping to integrate them into the global knowledge economy. Other authors raise deep concerns about whether these policy shifts will restrict growth through raising the costs of imitation, innovation, and acquiring international technologies. Poor countries may face permanently higher costs, raising questions about both the efficiency and equity implications. The chapter considers first the role of a balanced IPR regime in an overall economic development policy. This balance could involve widely varying protection standards at differing levels of economic development, growth, and social preferences. This situation is especially true in the world economy, where poorer countries may prefer to free ride on available international technologies. Much of the theoretical literature takes this view, suggesting that harmonized global policies could reduce innovation and growth. More recent literature takes a broader view of the ability of IPR to build global technology markets and support international information exchanges. Ultimately these are empirical questions and the available literature differs considerably in analytical approaches and conclusions. Thus, the chapter analyzes contributions from theory, empirical analysis, and case studies regarding prospective improvements or impediments to economic development arising from IPR reforms. These issues are especially important in public health and nutrition. The chapter concludes with an overview of how the globalized nature of IPR protection could affect developing countries. The essential point is that policy governing patents and copyrights needs to be embedded effectively in an overall economic development strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the debate about brand marketing that occurred as part of the 1930s consumer movement and continued after the Second World War in academic and regulatory circles.

This paper presents an historical account of the anti-brand marketing movement using a qualitative approach. It examines both primary and secondary historical sources as well as legal statutes, regulatory agency actions, judicial cases and newspaper and trade journal stories.

In response to the rise of brand marketing in the latter 1800s and early 1900s, the USA experienced an anti-brand marketing movement that lasted half a century. The first stage was public as part of the consumer movement but was overshadowed by the product safety and truth-in-advertising concerns. The consumer movement stalled when the USA entered the Second World War, but brand marketing continued to raise questions during the war as the US government attempted to regulate the provisions of goods during the war. After the war, the public accepted brand marketing. Continuing anti-brand marketing criticism was largely confined to academic writings and regulatory activities. Ultimately, many of the stage-two challenges to brand marketing went nowhere, but a few led to regulations that continue today.

This paper is the first to recognize a two-stage anti-brand marketing movement in the USA from 1929 to 1980 that has left a small but significant modern-day regulatory legacy.