Cultural Heritage Branding: Societal Costs and Benefits

The adoption of cultural heritage signs as trademarks entails several risks that must not be underestimated. Instead of enriching language and rhetoric devices, trademark protection restricts the freedom of future generations of authors to use affected cultural signs for new literary and artistic productions. Trademark protection means that one player in the communication process has strong incentives to invest in the development of her own messages and the suppression of the messages of others. Hence, the discourse surrounding affected cultural signs is no longer as open and free as it was before. Invoking broad protection against confusion and dilution, the trademark owner can take steps to censor artistic expressions that interfere with her branding strategy. The grant of trademark rights will also lead to a commercial redefinition and devaluation of affected cultural heritage material. Once a public domain sign is no longer exclusively linked with its cultural background in the mind of the audience, an artist cannot avoid the evocation of both cultural and commercial connotations. The addition of undesirable marketing messages tarnishes the cultural dimension of the affected sign. It will erode the sign’s artistic meaning and discourse potential over time and minimize the benefits – in the sense of impulses for societal renewal – which society could have derived from critical reflections on the cultural symbol and related societal conditions.