Copyright Law

Trademark Filings as Economic Indicators?

By David Ardia

Now this is interesting.  The Philadelphia Inquirer reports in an article entitled "What trademarks say about economy," that

[w]hen trademark filings are up, it's a good sign that the economy is humming along. But if they go up too fast, you may have a bubble on your hands. Or if they start to tail off after years of modest growth, there might be a recession in the offing.  "We are seeing applications now in 2008 going down, but they are dropping less sharply and fiercely than they did in late 2001," during the last recession, said [Glenn] Gundersen [a trademark and copyright lawyer at Dechert L.L.P.]

According to the Inquirer, trademark filings hit an all-time high of 287,000 in 2000, but then fell off more than 25 percent the following year.  "It wasn't until 2007 that they finally passed the record set in 2000 by topping 300,000. Since then, filings have declined slightly, less than 2 percent for the first half of this year, compared with the same time last year, nowhere near the precipitous drop of the last recession."

Maybe things aren't quite as bad on the economic front as events this past week would lead us to believe?

(Thanks to Marty Schwimmer at The Trademark Blog for alerting us to this.)

Full post as published by Citizen Media Law Project on September 30, 2008 (boomark / email).