This thesis aims at explaining the link between trade mark use and innovative activities. The first chapter describes the main legal aspects of trade marks and reviews existing literature in economics and management relating to them. The second chapter analyses how and why firms use trade marks and how they integrate them in their innovative activities. Through a theoretical and empirical approach, we show that trade marks are used in relation to innovations which are at the interface of the market, mainly product and marketing innovations. The third chapter then studies the interrelated effect of trade marks and patents in the protection of innovation. We show that depending on market characteristics, they may complement or substitute each other. In the fourth and final chapter, we explore the patterns of trade mark use by academic institutions, and investigate how these relate to their research activities.
