Worldwide IP status
The main theme of this article is to look and examine whether there is an increase or decrease in intellectual property (IP) usage and registration throughout the world. However we will look into this issue only from the perspective of trademark, designs, plant varieties and patents. Other types of intellectual property rights will not be taken into account. The main source of this article is World Intellectual Property Indicators 2022 prepared by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Trademarks
For trademark registrations around the world we can see an increasing trend in application filing. While in 2020 there were around 3.281.900 application filed, in 2021 we had an increase to 3.401.100 filed applications, which is 3,6% yearly increase. To highlight the few of the biggest markets, the European Union Intellectual Property Office had around 497.000 applications, China had around 899.000 applications, India had 488.526 applications and United Kingdom (UK) had 450.815 trademark applications, while the largest increase in trademark applications filling is spotted in United Kingdom (+61,8%) probably due to Brexit, Brazil (+32,3%), Mexico (+22,7%), Canada (+19,5%) and some others.
One of the interesting fact to point out is that the offices in Asia accounted for 69,7% of all trademark filings in 2021 that means the offices in other continents accounts only for 30,3% of all trademark filings in the world.
Designs
In 2021 there were around 1.200.000 design applications filed around the world, which is 6,8% increase in comparisson to 2020. The most design applications had been received by the China on first place, EUIPO on second place, UK on third place and Republic of Korea on fourth place. Same trend as in trademark applications can be examined in design application – offices in Asia accounted for 69,3% of all design applications in the world for 2021. To compare it with Europe, the European countries received 23,3% of all design applications.
The biggest growth of design application amount can be seen in China with around 660.000 applications filed per year. When we compare this to designs received in applications by the EUIPO that account for 117.049 in 2021, we can say that the China is on unprecendented growth in design applications amount.
Plant varieties
As for the new plant varieties, more than 25300 applications were filled around the world in 2021. This is a considerable growth of 12% when comparing to 2020. The most applications have been filed in China on 1st place, US on the 2nd place and the UK on the 3rd place. When it comes to plant varieties applications the Asia itself represents more than 52% of all plant variety application in 2021, making it have more applications than all the other continents around the world.
Patents
Speaking about patents, as one of the most traditionaly sought IP protection instrument, innovators have filed around 3.400.000 patent applications throughout the world in 2021 which is 3.6% more than patent applications received worldwide in 2020. Once againt China is the country which received the most patent applications counting 1.59 million of them in 2021 which is around 5.9% increase when comparing to 2020. Therefore China alone accounts for more than 46.6% of all patent applications filed worldwide in 2021. Second place belongs to the US, third to Japan and fourth to Republic of Korea.
Conclusion
We can clearly conclude that the global trend of IP registrations is still on growth while we can still expect even more growth in the near future. Also the majority of IP registrations are handled in the Asia region, while China is on enormous growth in IP registrations and therefore on leading position. As the majority of innovations, technologies and related intellectual property rights are moving towards Asia, we can only presume that this status will have a big impact on the world economy.
We can help you
If you are interested in registration of EU trademark, Community design or any other legal services we will gladly assist you in every step of these processes. For more help contact us anytime via form below, email or phone.
The whole process with us is very simple, transparent and time-saving for you.
