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Leavey School of Business Santa Clara University
Department ofEconomics

Selected Publications

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A person with glasses smiling against a dark background.

Trademark Squatters: Theory and Evidence from Chile

Christian Helmers, Carsten Fink and Carlos Ponce

International Journal of Industrial Organization 59, pp 340-371, July 2018

 

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Abstract

We explore the phenomenon of "trademark squatting" - a situation in which someone other than the original brand owner obtains a trademark on a brand. For this purpose, we develop a model that examines the effect of squatting on brand owners' trademark filing behavior and create an algorithm that identifies squatters empirically in the Chilean trademark register. Our empirical analysis shows that squatting is a systematic and frequent phenomenon and, as predicted by our theory, brand owners that have been exposed to squatting file more trademarks in a broader range of classes after being squatted.

 

 

LSB Research, ECON, 2018, Christian Helmers