Matching Trademarks and Voluntary Sustainability Standards

This dataset provides firm-level information linking registered trademarks and Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) certifications for businesses operating in Greece. It was constructed to support research into the intersection of sustainability practices, branding strategies, and firm competitiveness, particularly in the context of international trade.

The dataset combines information from two main sources:

Trademark data collected from the TMView and WIPO databases, including application and registration dates, trademark names, types, territories, and status.

VSS certification data compiled from 23 specialised online directories, covering various certification schemes across agriculture, forestry, mining, and manufacturing.

Given the unstructured and dispersed nature of the original sources, extensive web scraping and data cleaning techniques were employed to extract, standardise, and match data at the firm level. This process included fuzzy matching, harmonisation of firm names, and manual verification of selected entries.

The dataset includes the following key variable groups:

Trademark variables: name, type, status, application and registration dates, jurisdiction, trademark office, and Nice/Vienna classification codes.

VSS variables: standard name, type of certification, issue and expiry dates, and certification status.

Firm identifiers: standardised firm names, and where available, sector-level classifications.

This dataset is suitable for empirical analyses examining the relationship between sustainability standards, branding, and firm behaviour — including innovation, export activity, or participation in global value chains.