Trademark Trends Report Reveals 'CARB' is 'Phat' Branding Buzzword

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 5, 2004--

Annual report provides unique vantage point on direction of U.S. economy, products under development, what we will buy in the future

“Everyone from industry analysts to news reporters seeks to know what the future might hold. I like to think of my report as a tool for measuring trends in the economy”

Every spring, nationally recognized intellectual property attorney Glenn Gundersen of Dechert LLP puts aside his legal treatises for a few days and takes out his crystal ball. Casting an analytical eye to the previous year's trademark filings, Gundersen scrutinizes mountains of data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He reviews, categorizes, and audits the marks filed for application. He looks for harbingers of economic trends.

This year, Gundersen notes that a small uptick in the number of trademark filings in 2003 sends a mixed message for the overall economy. What is clear, however, is that everyone wants a piece of the low-CARB pie. Words and phrases containing CARB are being gobbled up as fast as people can file for them.

As he has done for the past 12 years, Gundersen has compiled his trademark research into his annual Trademark Trends, a one-of-a-kind overview on the "year that was" in trademark filings. The report offers a unique vantage point on fads that obsess Americans now, directions of new business opportunities, and marketing initiatives for the kinds of products we might soon see on store shelves.

Gundersen's just-released 2004 edition of Trademark Trends makes the following observations:

    --  With consumers counting carbs rather than fat, filings
        including the word FAT dropped by nearly half from 2002, while
        filings for marks containing CARB and PROTEIN jumped
        substantially. Catching the consumer eye in a cluttered
        supermarket aisle and through the "noise" of advertising is
        the all-important gold ring. Two of the most popular marks
        were LOW CARB LIFESTYLE and CARB CONSCIOUS. Other targeted
        names offering the promise of easy weight loss include: CARB
        HELPER, CARB PARTNERS, CARBUDDIES, CARB SUPPORT, and CARB
        COMPANION. And, ready to battle for your attention in the
        consumer landscape are: CARB KICKERS, CARB BREAKER, CARB
        BUSTERS, CARB CRUSHER, CARB SLAMMER, CARB CONQUEST, CARB
        TERMINATOR, CARB KILLER, CARB ASSASSIN, and CARB ANNIHILATORS.

        By the final quarter of the year, the race to cash in on the
        no-carb craze, reached feeding-frenzy status with numerous
        applicants seeking to gain exclusivity in the same
        carb-related marks. Even Atkins Nutritionals, the inspiration
        for the no-carb craze, found itself battling other applicants
        for marks.

    --  The economy seems to be on the road to recovery, but it's a
        sluggish journey. Overall applications were up 5 percent from
        last year, the first increase since 2000. However, the uptick
        was slight, signaling only a modest upturn in corporate
        optimism about the American appetite for new products,
        services, and business launches.

    --  Tech sector branding continues downhill. Trademark
        applications from technology companies helped fuel the late
        '90's bubble. Since the bubble burst, those firms remain in
        the doldrums, at least as measured by the demand for new brand
        names. Applications that referred to computer products or
        services dropped by more than 13 percent in 2003, the third
        year in a row of decline, from approximately 30,000 in 2002 to
        26,000 in 2003 (and down from 80,000 in 2000). Applications
        for products or services whose descriptions referred to the
        Internet fell seven percent, to just over 10,000, and have now
        dropped to a level that's only one-quarter of the 40,000+
        filings made in 2000.

    --  That tired branding buzzword EXTREME registered an
        inexplicable 20 percent increase in 2003. Included among the
        products that fancied themselves EXTREME were cake mix, beef
        jerky, fishing lures, conveyor belts, tricycles, refrigerator
        magnets, clip-on sunglasses, and pudding.

Trademark Trends makes numerous other observations, from the waning popularity of "xany spellingz" to the increased popularity of brands conveying home, tradition and back-to-basics.

Gundersen, also author of the book Trademark Searching and co-author of Intellectual Property Assets in Mergers and Acquisitions, is a nationally recognized, Philadelphia-based intellectual property attorney. He has been a partner with Dechert LLP for more than two decades and he serves as co-chair of the firm's intellectual property practice group. To his knowledge, he is the only U.S. attorney who annually looks at trademark filings and categorizes the data into an easy-to-understand, chart-driven report.

Gundersen explains how his report offers a unique vantage point on the U.S. economy: "Everyone from industry analysts to news reporters seeks to know what the future might hold. I like to think of my report as a tool for measuring trends in the economy," he says. "New applications represent potential new businesses, product launches, line extensions, or ad campaigns. One can see a decade of economic optimism reflected in the rising tide of filings from 1992 through early 2000. There was a 32 percent increase in 1999 and another big jump in 2000. That was followed by a 23 percent decrease in 2001. From the vantage point of branding, 1999 and 2000 were bubble years, closely tracking the .COM boom."

And now, with the 2003 numbers, comes the first good news since 2000 - a slight increase, with applications up 5 percent. "Interestingly, the numbers correspond with what we are hearing every day about the economy: We're in an upswing, but growth is slow."

With more than 700 lawyers in 17 cities in the United States and Europe, Dechert LLP provides a full range of legal services to corporations and financial institutions in transactional, intellectual property, regulatory, and litigation matters. Visit Dechert on the web at www.dechert.com.

Note to Editors: Glenn Gundersen's Trademark Trends is available upon request or by visiting www.dechert.com and clicking on the "Glenn Gundersen" story. The report contains easy-to-read tables and breaks down trends by trademark category. Gundersen is available to discuss his findings. You may access his biography at www.dechert.com. Click on "Lawyers" and type "Gundersen" into the search box. Or simply go here: http://www.dechert.com/lawyers/lawyers.jsp?pg=detail&id=179.