Webinar by Christian Helmers, 31-03-20@13:00GMT

Please join us for a webinar on Tuesday the 31st of March 2020 at 13:00 London time i.e. 14:00 Brussels time, 15:00 Athens time. The speaker is Christian Helmers, Santa Clara University, USA. The title of the talk is "Submarine Trademarks".

The moderator will be Dr. Andreas Panagopoulos. The program we use to deliver webinars is called FreeConference. It is a browser based program and it requires Google Chrome. To join us follow this link: https://hello.freeconference.com/conf/call/3011249

This webinar is free and open to all. To participate and for further information, please contact Dr. Andreas Panagopoulos at least a day prior to the seminar.

Abstract: Companies use trademarks to protect their brands from outright imitation or competition by confusingly similar products. However, publication of trademark applications by the trademark office discloses strategic information about a firm’s future products and planned market entry. This creates a tradeoff between legal protection for new brands and inadvertent information disclosure. We analyze the trade-off through the lens of “submarine trademarks” in the United States – submarine trademarks are trademarks whose publication and hence disclosure to the public is strategically delayed. We provide the first systematic evidence of submarine trademarks and explores their effectiveness in reducing the disclosure of information, their determinants and their impact on companies’ stock prices.