Client conversations about trademark policing and anticounterfeiting programs often start with the same question: is this actually worth the investment, or is it just a cost of doing business? A growing body of empirical research — from firm-level economic studies to industry ROI frameworks — provides a clear, data-backed answer.
The Bottom Line
Trademark ownership carries a robust, causally identified, and economically significant revenue and profitability premium that compounds over time. Ongoing brand policing and anticounterfeiting enforcement work best when treated as continuous brand-equity maintenance — protecting pricing power, market share, and long-term revenue — rather than as one-off litigation wins.
Trademark Registration Drives Real, Measurable Growth
The most rigorous evidence comes from a study that used the random assignment of USPTO trademark examiners to isolate the causal effect of trademark registration on business outcomes. Because examiner assignment is effectively random, researchers could compare firms whose marks were approved to firms with similar marks that were denied — controlling for underlying product quality, marketing spend, and other confounding factors. [1]
The results were striking. A one-standard-deviation increase in trademark output was linked to:
- Profit increases of 1.66% after one year, growing to 4.93% after five years
- Market share gains of 0.98% immediately, rising to 3.82% within five years
- Increases in production output, capital investment, and employment over the same period
Notably, firms whose trademark applications failed saw none of these gains — strong evidence that it is the registered right itself, not merely the underlying business activity, driving the effect. The average individual trademark in this study was valued at $36.76 million (2016 dollars), exceeding the average value of a patent. [1]
A separate study using stock market reactions to trademark publication events found a median trademark value of $22.5 million for publicly traded companies, with that value closely tied to product innovation and differentiation. [2]
Brand Owners Outperform Across the Board
A joint European Union study covering more than 127,000 companies over more than a decade found that businesses owning intellectual property rights generate 20% higher revenue per employee than companies without any IP portfolio. After controlling for industry, size, and country, that premium rises to 55% — and even higher for small and medium-sized businesses. [3]
The data breaks down by IP combination as follows:
IP Ownership Profile | Revenue-Per-Employee Premium |
|---|---|
Trademark ownership only | 20.9% |
Trademark + design combined | 63% |
Patent + trademark + design combined | 60% |
Companies that own IP rights also pay 19% higher average wages than non-owners, and trademark-intensive industries carry a 48% wage premium over non-IP-intensive industries — a gap that has widened over time as brand-based competition intensifies. [4]
Enforcement's Payoff Is Cumulative, Not Instant
It is worth being candid with clients about nuance here. Short-window stock market studies of individual lawsuit filings tell a more complicated story. One study found the market reacted negatively to a plaintiff's decision to file a trademark infringement suit, with no significant reaction for the defendant. An earlier study similarly found mixed and only marginally significant returns for plaintiffs enforcing their marks, though large firms did see modest positive returns. [7]
The takeaway is not that enforcement fails to pay off — it is that enforcement's financial benefits accrue cumulatively, through preserved pricing power, protected market share, and deterred future infringement, rather than through a single dramatic litigation victory. This is consistent with treating brand protection as an ongoing program rather than episodic firefighting.
Anticounterfeiting Protects Pricing Power and Revenue
Academic modeling published in the journal Sustainability found that anti-counterfeiting efforts have a positive impact on the selling price of genuine branded products and on firm profits, though the specific effect depends on which party in the supply chain implements the strategy. A related study of online marketplace intermediaries found that anti-counterfeiting activity interacts meaningfully with a platform's underlying revenue model in determining counterfeit-sales outcomes. [8]
The International Trademark Association's 2025 Anticounterfeiting Committee report frames revenue protection and market-share retention as the core, quantifiable ROI metrics for brand protection programs. INTA even provides a straightforward ROI formula: gross profit recovered from seized counterfeit volume, minus enforcement costs, multiplied by gross margin. [10]
The Scale of What's at Stake
The macroeconomic backdrop makes the case concrete. The OECD estimates that counterfeit and pirated goods accounted for USD 467 billion — 2.3% of global imports — in 2021 alone, a volume of trade comparable to the GDP of a mid-sized country. [11]
Earlier OECD/EUIPO analysis found counterfeit trade more than doubled between 2008 and 2013, from $250 billion to over $461 billion, displacing hundreds of billions in genuine economic activity and threatening millions of jobs worldwide. [12]
Every dollar diverted to counterfeit sales is a dollar of legitimate revenue that a well-run anticounterfeiting program is designed to recapture or prevent from being lost in the first place.
Reframing Enforcement as an Investment
Recent industry commentary makes the ROI case even more concrete. One analysis modeled a hypothetical brand spending $200,000 annually on a policing program that recovers just a 1–2% price premium across a $50 million revenue base — yielding a return of $500,000 to $1,000,000, or a 2.5x to 5x multiple on program spend, before even counting avoided litigation costs or brand-valuation benefits. [13]
Businesses that treat enforcement as an integrated part of ongoing brand management, rather than a series of one-off lawsuits, tend to experience fewer high-severity disputes and lower average costs per matter over time. Consistent enforcement also sends a signal to the marketplace — to competitors, distributors, licensees, and investors alike — that reduces the likelihood of future infringement in the first place.
A Word of Caution
Not all findings favor aggressive enforcement without limits. Legal scholarship on "trademark bullying" documents that overreaching against marginal or non-infringing uses can backfire, creating reputational and legal risk that undermines the very brand equity enforcement is meant to protect. The data supports vigorous, well-targeted enforcement — not indiscriminate litigation. [5]
What This Means for Your Brand
The research supports a straightforward, two-part strategy for businesses evaluating their trademark and anticounterfeiting programs:
- Secure registered trademark protection early — the revenue and profitability gains from registration are real, measurable, and compound over a multi-year horizon.
- Treat policing and anticounterfeiting as continuous brand maintenance with quantifiable ROI, rather than as reactive, one-off litigation — the payoff shows up in preserved pricing power and market share over time, not necessarily in any single case.
This report is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Businesses evaluating their own trademark enforcement strategy should consult with experienced trademark counsel to tailor an approach to their specific brand, industry, and risk profile.
Sources
[1] Desai, Gavrilova, Silva & Soares, "The Value of Trademarks" (SSRN, 2022)
[2] Erik Pelton, "Study Shows the Financial Value of Trademark Registration" (2025)
[3] EUIPO/EPO, "Intellectual Property Rights and Firm Performance in the European Union" (2021)
[4] EUIPO, "IPR-Intensive Industries and Economic Performance in the EU"
[5] La, "Bully No More: Why Trademark Owners Engage in Trademark Bullying", Washington Law Review
[6] "Do Trademark Infringement Lawsuits Affect Brand Value: A Stock Market Perspective", Springer
[7] "Of Marks and Markets: An Empirical Study of Trademark Litigation", UNLV Scholars
[10] INTA, "Anticounterfeiting and Return on Investment", 2025 ACC Committee Report
[11] OECD, "Counterfeit and Pirated Goods"
[12] AACS Global, "Impact of Counterfeits" (citing OECD/EUIPO data)
