On trademarks and innovation: a retrospective, 10 years later

In this retrospective, we look back at the origins of our 2014 Industry & Innovation paper ‘Are trademark counts a valid indicator of innovation? Results of an in-depth study of new Benelux trademarks filed by SMEs’. We reflect on the impact of that paper over the past decade and identify new research avenues. The paper’s key contribution was to determine whether and when new trademark filings by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are connected to innovation. We reconstruct how our pioneering methodological efforts fuelled a research agenda on trademarks and innovation. We identify how this agenda now offers insights across several disciplines.