WTR is 25 years old !
Congrats
Here’s their pr
WTR turns 25 today, and we couldn’t let the milestone pass us by without stopping to reflect on the journey so far.
On 5 June 2001, World Trademark Review published its first article. The headlines that day featured disputes involving Danone, Ikea, ‘new.net’ and ‘register.com’ – a snapshot of an IP landscape grappling with global brands and the tensions of the digital era, long before the expanded new gTLD environment.
View from WTR’s Borough Market office
Twenty-five years on, that mix is still familiar.
Back then, WTR operated out of a small office in London’s iconic Borough Market. The trains would rattle the windows as they passed overhead. Friday afternoons ended across the road in the market taverns – a ritual that felt, even then, like a small celebration of a job well done.
The business behind WTR has changed monumentally. Globe Business Publishing was the name on the door at the time. This later became part of Law Business Research and, after our 2025 merger with ALM, last month we became a proud product of Centellic.
But through it all, WTR’s core mission has remained the same – to provide timely, reliable and practical insight, data and analysis for trademark professionals worldwide.
The WTR brand started life as an online offering. So the launch of the first WTR magazine in May/June 2006 marked a major milestone.
Selection of WTR magazines
The cover story that issue – “The battle of the beers” – examined the long-running dispute between Anheuser-Busch and Budejovicky Budvar over the BUDWEISER mark.
It set the tone for what would follow: global disputes, high stakes and a focus on what legal outcomes mean in practice for brand owners. Not to mention it was another hint to the WTR team’s fondness for raising a glass – when the work is done, of course.
Events soon followed, and they quickly became central to the WTR brand.
The first WTR Industry Awards took place in Chicago in 2007, bringing the community together in person for the first time under the WTR banner.
