Economic research

Working paper: “Competitive Dynamism in Nascent Markets: Trademarks and Superstar Firm Entry in the Metaverse"

In September 2023, the USPTO released Economic Working Paper 2023-1, “Competitive Dynamism in Nascent Markets: Trademarks and Superstar Firm Entry in the Metaverse.” This paper studies the firms filing for trademarks related to the early metaverse, and documents the impact of Facebook’s 2014 acquisition of Oculus on other firms’ metaverse activities. The analysis finds that Facebook’s entry led to a 10% decline in new metaverse trademarks. Decomposing this average effect, larger firms were minimally impacted, while smaller firms and those involved in the import or export of physical goods experienced the largest declines.

For more information, read the working paper or the published article.

A graph that plots trademark class counts by year, comparing metaverse and non-metaverse classes relative to a common 2013 baseline. Both move together until 2015, when metaverse classes experience a slower growth rate and diverge downward from non-metaverse classes, opening up a 10% gap by 2018.

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