Universities’ trademark patterns and possible determinants

Academic institutions may register trademarks (TMs) to protect and exploit key intangible assets (e.g. reputation), to better market current and prospective initiatives, and to better appropriate the output of innovative activities. TM registration by academic institutions -- so far overlooked by the literature addressing the third function of universities -- is investigated here. The analysis relies on a novel panel data set containing information about US universities, their main characteristics, and their TM and patent activities over the period 1997--2007. Our contribution is exploratory in nature and descriptive in aim and uncovers a number of relationships worth being investigated further, among them are the persistence of Intellectual Property Rights activities by academic institutions and the existence of positive and significant relationships between TM registration and universities’ characteristics such as being private institutions, the number of students enrolled and the share of graduate students, the share of federal funds received, and the presence of medical schools.