This book examines trademarks and brands, and their historical role in national competitive and comparative advantage and in overall economic growth. The contributors provide an historical account of the contribution of brands in consumer goods to economic growth; examine the development of trademark law, its influence on brand strategy, and reciprocally the influence of strategy on the law; and look at the building and repositioning of individual brands as example of the interplay of law and strategy.

Brands and trademarks are usually discussed from the perspective of marketing. This book draws together scholars and practitioners not only from marketing, but also from business history, law, economics, and economic history to provide a richer understanding of trade marks and competitiveness than has hitherto been available.

Paul Duguid is Adjunct Professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley and Research Professor in the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary, University of London. He is interested in issues of quality, particularly in the information age, and this has led him to investigate methods of warranting, including trade marks. He is author (with John Seely Brown) of The Social Life of Information and of essays that range from wine history to organizational knowledge.

Teresa da Silva Lopes is Professor of International Business the University of York. Her research interests range from globalisation, the evolution of international business and the multinational enterprise, to international strategy and marketing, the role of brands in the creation of global capitalism and corporate governance. She is the author of numerous books and articles on brands and trademarks and the growth of firms, including Global Brands and the Evolution of Multinationals in Alcoholic Beverages (2007) and Internationalisation and Concentration in Port Wine (1998). She is completing a ESRC funded project on The History of Brands and Trade Marks, jointly with Paul Duguid and John Mercer. She has held visiting research fellowships at the University of California Berkeley, and École Polytechnique, and a postdoctoral position at Said Business School, Oxford University. She is currently a Council Member and Webmaster of the British Association of Business Historians, a member of the Newcomen Prize Committee of the journal Enterprise & Society, a fellow of the Network on Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe (DIME), a fellow of the Centre for Globalisation Research (QMUL), a visiting research fellow at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, and a research associate of the Centre for International Business History and Centre for Institutional Performance at the University of Reading. She is former Reviews Editor for the journal Business History, and Trustee of the American Business History Conference.