Monetizing marks: Insights from the USPTO Trademark Assignment Dataset

• Author: Stuart J. H. Graham,Amanda F. Myers,Alan C. Marco
• Date: 01 September 2018
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jems.12261

Received: 30 July 2014 Revised: 15 March 2017 Accepted: 10 May 2017

DOI: 10.1111/jems.12261

SPECIAL ISSUE

Monetizing marks: Insights from the USPTO Trademark

Assignment Dataset

Stuart J. H. Graham1Alan C. Marco2Amanda F. Myers3

1Scheller College of Business, GeorgiaInsti-

tute of Technology,Atlanta, Georgia

2School of Public Policy,Georgia Institute of

Technology,Atlanta, Georgia

3United States Patent and TrademarkOffice,

Office of Chief Economist, Alexandria,

Virginia

Correspondence

Stuart J.H. Graham, SchellerCollege of Busi-

ness,Georgia Institute of Technology, 800 W.

PeachtreeSt. NW, Atlanta, GA 30308 USA.

Email:stuar t.graham@scheller.gatech.edu

Theviews expressed are those of the indi-

vidualaut hors and do notnecessar ilyreflect

officialpositions of t he UnitedStates Patent

andTrademark Office or the Office of Chief

Economist.Both Graham and Marco were

employeesof USPTO during the writing of t his

manuscript. Wethank Robert Kimble for data

parsingand coding; Georg von Graevenitz,

SaurabhVishnubhakat, and participants at

the USPTO-SearleCenter Workshop on New

Innovation-researchData Sources (April 9–10,

2015)for useful comments.

Abstract

Attention to the asset value of intellectual property (IP) has traditionally concentrated

on high-value patent sales and licenses. This narrow focus neglects nonpatent assets

held by a broader set of economic agents, such as trademarks, and overlooksthe evolv-

ing ways owners are employing and monetizing their intangible assets. To help rem-

edy this deficiency, the Office of Chief Economist of the United States Patent and

Trademark Office (USPTO) is releasing a series of datasets in formats convenient

for researchers. This article describes the USPTO Trademark Assignment Dataset,a

database of over 785,000 transactions recorded during 1952–2013 affecting almost

4.2 million trademark registrations and applications. We provide a comprehensive

description and present key trends, showing that among registrations issued during

1978–2013, more than 31% were affected by some transaction during their lives, 21%

were transferred to different parties, and 12% were involved in at least one security

interest agreement. Examining transaction rates by registration cohort, we find evi-

dence that registered U.S. trademarks may be more likely to be traded than are U.S.

patents. Other trends and findings are discussed. Despite limitations, these data open

new avenues for research,par ticularly with respect to trademark collateralization and

the market for brands.

KEYWORDS

brands, innovation, intellectual property, licensing, markets for technology,trademarks

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

O3, L2, G1, G2, G3

1INTRODUCTION

Attention to the asset value of intellectual property (IP) is often limited to high-value patent sales and licenses. This narrow focus

not only neglects nonpatent assets—such as trademarks—held by a broader set of economic agents, but it also overlooks the

evolving ways owners are employing and monetizing their IP assets beyond assignments and licensing agreements. One explana-

tion for the lack of attention to nonpatent assets and their monetization is the dearth of data sources available to researchers and

the public. To help remedy this deficiency and foster research on IP generally, the Office of Chief Economist at the United States

Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or Office) is releasing a series of datasets in formats more convenient for comprehen-

sive analysis than data previously available.1This article describes the USPTO Trademark Assignment Dataset (TMA Dataset),

a relational database of assignments and other transactions that pertain to federally registered U.S. trademarks.2

As defined in the United States, a trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, design, color, smell, sound, or combination thereof

that identifies and distinguishes the goods and services of one party from those of others.3U.S. law prevents others from using

J Econ Manage Strat. 2018;27:403–432. © 2018 WileyPeriodicals, Inc. 403wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jems

404 JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENTSTRATEGY

confusingly similar marks, thereby protecting the owner's brand and investments from misappropriation. As IP, a trademark

can be transferred or sold between parties using a properly executed assignment of all or part of the interest in a trademark

registration or application from the existing owner (the assignor) to the recipient (the assignee).

Since such information has not been commonly used by the research community, we provide a comprehensive description of

the TMA Dataset and the institutional structure necessary to understand the data. The TMA Dataset contains detailed information

on more than 785,000 assignments and other transactions voluntarily recorded at the USPTO between 1952 and 2013 involving

over 1.49 million unique trademark properties (a single application or registration). Because assignments can transfer more

than one trademark, and many trademarks are transferred more than once over their active life, the TMA Dataset contains over

4.1 million observations at the property-transaction level.

While the USPTO releases trademark assignment data to the public in hierarchically structured XML files, these records

require considerable programing and cleaning effort to be exploited by researchers. We parsed the XML files and migrated the

data to a relational database in formats more compatible with statistical software and, thereby, more accessible to the research

community. The paper reports on our analysis of the TMA Dataset, presenting key trends in assignments and other transactions

and examining the rate at which registered trademarks have been involved in various recorded transactions during the last

30 years. Even as the overall stock of trademark properties being held in the economy has grown, we find that a uniform 5–8%

of live properties have some kind of transaction recorded at the USPTO each year. Cumulatively, among 3.4 million registrations

issued during the 1978–2013 period, 31% were reported as being involved in at least one transaction during their life, 21% had

a recorded assignment or merger, and 12% were involved in a security interest agreement. Since recording is voluntary, these

statistics are likely lower bounds, and while further empirical work is needed to validate our findings, an analysis of transaction

rates by registration cohort suggests that registered trademarks may be traded at higher rates than are patents. Moreover, unlike

patent assignments, trademarks do not show a positive statistical relationship between the incidence of recorded trading and

paying maintenance fees, raising questions about the appropriateness of using patent statistics as a model for how markets for

trademarks should be understood by researchers.

The TMA Dataset provides a number of opportunities for researchers. Trends in the market for brands can be studied. Trans-

actions can occur throughout a registered mark's lifecycle (filing through death) and registrations can be renewed indefinitelyso

long as the mark remains in use. Accordingly, the data capture lengthy assignment histories for some properties, with the oldest

transaction recorded in 1884 on a mark still actively maintained on the register in January 2015.4

That said, it is important that researchers understand the limitations inherent in using these data. Because assignments and

other transactions are recorded as submitted with minimal to no verification or validation, users should be cautious of poten-

tial recording errors and redundancies (see Section 4.3). Possible selection bias must also be considered since there is no legal

requirement to record trademark transactions with the USPTO, and recording by the transacting parties is not mandatory. So,

although statutory and regulatory laws provide incentives to record transactions with the USPTO throughout the entire life of a

registered mark (see Section 3.1), we are unable in this article to report on the representativeness of this sample to the overall

population of transactions. These issues, coupled with censoring due to any type of backward-looking record, demonstrate that

further efforts by follow-on researchers is warranted, particularly in validating these data, standardizing assignee and assig-

nor names, updating for original data recorded in error, and linking recorded security interest agreements to their subsequent

releases.

The article is organized as follows. In Section 2, we survey some past empirical research on trademarks, the market for IP,

and IP collateralization. Section 3 provides a brief primer on the most common types of transactions recorded with the USPTO.

Section 4 describes the source and organizational structure of the TMA Dataset and reviews the key variables in each data file.

In Section 5, we discuss trends in executed transactions and transacting parties and examine the rate of transaction for issued

registrations. Section 6 concludes with some suggested topics for further study.

2LITERATURE REVIEW

This article builds upon and is related to an earlier publication by Graham, Hancock, Marco, and Myers (2013a) describing a dif-

ferent research-ready public data set, the USPTO Trademark Case Files Dataset, which providescomprehensive U.S. trademark

administrative data related to the trademark registration (first instance) and renewal (periodic maintenance) processes. While

these data are rich and include information related to mark characteristics, ownership, classification, and prosecution, it does

not include information on the transfer of ownership per se.5Accordingly, for most researchers, that earlier dataset will be an

important companion to the TMA Dataset described in this article.6