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Trademarking firms are more productive, generate higher profits, and have a better survival rate. Trademarking firms are in one word more successful, which might motivate non-trademarking firms to adopt a trademark strategy. But this does not seem to be the case. The proportion of trademarking firms in the German business sector amounts to just 18%. This figure is quite low, given that nearly each firm has reputation to protect. But why does the vast majority of firms not have registered trademarks? Using a representative sample of German firms, the present paper links certain firm characteristics to a firm's propensity to register trademarks. The empirical results point to circumstances under which trademarks are significantly more often used: this is the case where a large distance between a firm and its customers exists, a firm's product quality is difficult to assess, a firm's products are characterised by a limited (but not strong) substitutability, and where a firm is engaged in R&D and introduces innovative products. Trademarks are considerably less frequently used if none of this is the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses how geographical clustering of beneficiaries might affect the effectiveness of public innovation support programs. The geographical proximity of firms operating in the same industry or field of technology is expected to facilitate innovation through knowledge spillovers and other localization advantages. Public innovation support programs may leverage these advantages by focusing on firms that operate in a cluster. We investigate this link using data from a large German program that co-funds R&D projects of SMEs in key technology areas called 'Innovative SMEs'. We employ three alternative cluster measures which capture industry, technology and knowledge dimensions of clusters. Regardless of the measure, firms located in a geographical cluster are more likely to participate in the program. Firms being part of a knowledge-based cluster significantly increase their chance of receiving public financial support. We find no effects, however, of geographical clustering on the program's effectiveness in terms of input or output additionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most marketing practitioners and scholars agree that marketing assets such as brand equity significantly contribute to a firm's financial performance. In this paper, we model brand equity as an unobservable stock that results from up to 30 years of past brand-related investment flows. Using firm-specific trademarks as investment proxies, our results show a significant long-run impact on financial performance. The dynamic profile of brand-related investments has an inverted-U shape that reaches its peak after 11 years. On average, it takes four years before brand-related investments show a positive return, and investments older than 19 years show no significant impact. For the median trademarking firm, brand equity contributes €265,000 to annual profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the use and effectiveness of patents and trade secrets designed to protect innovation. While previous studies have usually considered patents and trade secrets as substitutes for one another, we investigate to what extent and in what situations the two protection methods are used jointly. We identify protection strategies for single innovation firms and hence overcome the assignment problem of existing empirical studies, that is, whether firms using both protection methods do so for the same innovation or for different innovations. Employing firm panel data from Germany, we find fairly few differences between the determinants for choosing secrecy and patenting. Single innovators that combine both strategies, 39% of the group, tend to aim at a higher level of innovation and act in a more uncertain technological environment. Firms combining both protection methods yield significantly higher sales with new-to-market innovations, providing some evidence for a complementarity of the two protection methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]