Service marks as indicators for innovation in knowledge-based services

It has long been a tradition in the field of innovation research to use quantitative indicators to measure the extent of innovation activities and analyze them in from a comparative cross-national perspective. For instance, using patents is an established way of assessing innovation output in the realm of technologies and products. With the growing relevance of services as an important economic activity, the need for specific indicators that can be used to measure innovation output in this context is growing. In this paper we discuss the possibilities and limits of using service marks as basic innovation indicators for services. As most macroanalyses on the basis of marks are not harnessing their full potential, improved methods for more detailed approaches are presented. In detail, the use of community trademarks proves to be insufficient for valid statistical analyses; international registrations combined with community trademarks should be used instead. Some examples are given to illustrate the potential of this approach on a lower level of aggregation.