Marking your trade: Cultural factors in the prolongation of trademarks

Trademarks protecting the brand name and associations are crucial in a brand's strategy, but little is known about the factors that determine a trademark's prolongation. To explain the prolongation of trademarks, the research estimated a multilevel hazard model accounting for trademark characteristics, firm's characteristics, and firm's country of origin national culture. The dataset comprises a census of 2911 trademarks in the US software security industry across an eight-year period, belonging to firms originating from 11 countries. The results indicate that a firm's culture of origin has a systematic effect on the types of trademark the firm is more likely to prolong and on the length of the prolongation. The age of the trademark, the number of categories where a particular trademark is present, and the age of the firm increase the likelihood of a trademark's prolongation. Larger and more innovative firms tend to terminate their trademarks earlier.