Trademark applications can be a crystal ball of branding. New applications provide a glimpse of the buzzwords and themes that marketers believe will appeal to tomorrow’s consumers.
So each year, Glenn A. Gundersen, a nationally recognized intellectual property attorney, publishes the “Annual Report on Trends in Trademarks.” Gundersen is the chair of the Trademark Group at Dechert LLP (www.dechert.com). We asked him about his just-published analysis of the year 2007.
Q: Was 2007 a busy year for trademark filings?
Not just busy, but the busiest ever. New applications hit a record high at the Trademark Office, topping the 300,000 mark for the first time in history in calendar year 2007. That beat the previous all-time high of 289,000 set during the Internet bubble year of 2000.
Q: What does this suggest to you?
That businesses were still bullish on the economy during 2007. New filings in every single month topped those or the same month in 2006, driven in particular by new marks for financial services, eco-friendly products, and web-based services.
Q: What kind of trademarks led the way?
Companies are going green, and that’s their word of choice to communicate environmental consciousness. At the Trademark Office last year, every day must have seemed like Earth Day. Applications for trademarks using the word GREEN more than doubled in 2007, going from 1,100 to 2,400.
But the result was green gridlock, with multiple companies filing for almost-identical marks at the same time. As an example, four different applicants sought trademark registration for GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK for apparel or tote bags.
Originality was not always the watchword: The phrase GO GREEN appeared in various forms in more than 100 proposed marks.
Q: Was anything close behind “green?”
CLEAN went hand-in-hand with GREEN, with more than 900 applications in 2007, up from 800 in 2006. The words GREEN and CLEAN appeared together in 74 would-be trademarks.
The prefix ECO was also hot in 2007, more than doubling its popularity with nearly 900 new applications. In fact, if all the new ECO-branded products filed in 2007 actually came to market, an ECO CITIZEN could buy an ECOHOUSE in ECOTOWN from an ECO REALTOR. And that ECOHOUSE would feature ECO HANGERS in the ECO CLOSET, and an ECOSNUG bed under an ECO BLANKET, with ECO LINENS for your ECOMATTRESS.
Applications for marks incorporating the word EARTH showed a huge increase, jumping from 550 to over 900. PLANET was a popular alternative, up 50% from 275 to over 400. GLOBE/GLOBAL also showed a significant jump, up 36%.
Q: Do you see other significant trends in trademarks?
In a word, China. The vast majority of applications filed with the Trademark Office come from U.S. businesses, but about 15% are from companies in other countries seeking to protect their marks in America. Among these foreign applicants, China has been responsible for the most significant increase in recent years.
Back in 2003, Chinese companies accounted for only 500 U.S. applications, but in 2007 the number rose to 1,750, leapfrogging applicants from South Korea and Taiwan, each of which accounted for about 1,000 filings.
Q: And looking forward?
Marketers sensed that consumers were looking ahead in 2007, as new marks emphasized tomorrow rather than yesterday. Brands containing the word FUTURE were up 14%, filings for NEXT, TOMORROW and MODERN were all up 17%, and FORWARD increased 32%. In contrast, the word CLASSIC showed no increase at all, and TRADITION only inched up 3%.
