Trademark filings can be an interesting lens to look at an entire industry. Today, we’ll look at real estate. It had a huge rise in the 2000s as housing prices boomed, then the subprime mortgage crisis hit the industry hard from 2007 – 2010.

Trademark filing trends track the rise, fall, and slow return of the industry surprisingly well. I looked at 4 main classes – Class 9 (apps), 35 (), 36 (), and 42 (hosted software). Filing trends for each largely match up, although Class 36 is both the most common class for applications and has seen the most proportionate growth in the post-2013 rebound.

The filing uptick before 2007 is clear, and followed by the sharp, recession-induced tail that we would expect. Filings were static though 2013, and started to rebound. Class 9 and 42 (apps and websites) are the least common, which may make sense given the additional technological investment required. Class 35 (real estate sales and marketing services) were more common, and Class 36 (listing and brokerage services) by far the most.

It’s not quite clear why Class 36 applications have spiked more than other classes over the last three years. I suspected that it might be a rise in foreign applicants, especially from China, but that is not a meaningful factor.

It is interesting that trademark filings have jumped more than actual US home sales – sales dropped from more than 7 million in 2005 to a low of 4.1 million in 2008 and 2010; sales have only rebounded to around 5.5 million per year in 2017-2018.