Long, Clarisa --- "The political economy of trademark dilution" [2008] ELECD 164; in Dinwoodie, B. Graeme; Janis, D. Mark (eds), "Trademark Law and Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Trademark Law and Theory

Editor(s): Dinwoodie, B. Graeme; Janis, D. Mark

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845426026

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: The political economy of trademark dilution

Author(s): Long, Clarisa

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

4 Trade mark bureaucracies
Robert Burrell*



I. Introduction
Academic discussions of the justifications for trade mark protection have
focused on the arguments that trade marks reduce consumer search costs1 and
protect against misappropriation of other traders' labour and investment.2 One
thing that is striking about these justifications, however, is that they provide
little explanation of trade mark registration. This disjuncture between the stan-
dard justifications for trade mark protection and the existence and operation of
registered trade mark systems is significant, because having a registered trade
mark system requires a substantial expenditure of resources. Most obviously, a
registered trade mark system requires the existence of a bureaucracy to process
applications for registration. Less obvious costs flow from having a special
class of lawyers (that is, "trade mark agents" or "trade mark attorneys") who

* Associate Professor and Associate Director for Australian Centre for
Intellectual Property in Agriculture, the University of Queensland, TC Beirne School
of Law. My thanks go to Graeme Austin, Lionel Bently, Michael Handler, Charles
Lawson and Kimberlee Weatherall.
1 See, e.g., WILLIAM LANDES & RICHARD POSNER, THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW Ch. 7 (2003); Nicholas Economides, The Economics of
Trademarks, 78 TRADEMARK REP. 523, 525­6 (1988); I.P.L. Png & David Reitman,
Why Are Some Products Branded and Others Not?, 38 J.L. & ECON. 207 (1995). By
allowing consumers to identify products they have enjoyed in the past, trade marks
also, on this view, provide traders with incentives to compete on grounds other than
...