Asset or Liability? Trade Marks in the Sheffield Cutlery and Tool Trades

Abstract

Sheffield was a nineteenth-century poineer in trade mark legislation, testifying to an involvement with the marking of goods dating from the sixteenth century. The article discusses the reasons for the importance of trade marks in steel hardware products; describes Sheffield's involvement with trade mark legislation, first for company trade marks, and then for geographic marks; and finally, assesses the impact of Sheffield's trade mark policy. Far from being indispensable, it is concluded that trade marks became as much a liability as an asset and the English town's attempts to defend them (through the industry's craft guild, the Cutlers' Company) were linked more with industrial decline and conservatism than with success. The view that trade marks were a ‘neglected intangible asset’ closely linked with the rise of the modern corporation would therefore appear to need qualification.