This piece examines the relationship between trade marks and innovation activities and outputs. It acknowledges the growing interest of the legal doctrine as to how trade marks may enhance and transgress their basic function of being source-indicator and reputation-related asset in order to support the development of innovation activities. However, market studies do not confer consistent results as to whether trade marks facilitate the reinvestment in innovation, serve as valuable intangibles monetized to attract capital, ensure successful commercialization of outputs, or are simply used as barrier to entry with various anti-competitive effects. The present piece looks into two recent economic studies to verify the assumption concerning the positive corelation between trade marks and innovation. One study analyses the role played by trade marks in the commercialization of sustainable innovations by Dutch SMEs. Another study maps the regional trade mark activity in 47 Japanese prefectures in order to evaluate ...