5. Discussion and conclusions
The preliminary research question proposed here is important for retail entrepreneurs in allocating their resources to IP. Copyrights and trademarks that fulfill a unique cognitive niche for customers and/or provide competitive protections seem to increase the odds of retail venture survival. Our research that demonstrated broader support for patents, trademarks, and copyrights in improving survival odds. To our knowledge, this study is distinctive because of its focus on retail ventures from their early years. This focus on early-stage retail firms not only extends traditionally used public data and surveys but also adds a unique lens to retailing literature by allowing for focus on early stages of a retail firm lifecycle.
Allocation of resources towards IP is critical for retail entrepreneurs to understand. Investing in developing and filing for patents is generally advised in entrepreneurship curriculum and by investors. Development of intellectual property can be a very expensive and time-consuming proposition. They may not however initially recognize that the government imposes a number of fees on any organization that applies for a patent or wishes to maintain one that has been granted. The fees required by the USPTO can easily run into the thousands of dollars, even before legal and other auxiliary expenses are included. The amounts vary with the size of the business and lifetime of the patent but include the following fees for any applicant: application filing, enrollment, examination, extension of time, maintenance, miscellaneous, petition, post-issuance, post-allowance, search, service, and trial and appeal. Other fees include the patent cooperation treaty fees for national and international stages and fees to foreign offices. Finally, a Hague fee will apply if an international design application is involved. A similar but far shorter list of fees exists for any trademark application.
