Bucking the trend from previous economic downturns, IP filings remained strong during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and soared in 2021, WIPO’s World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report showed.
Innovators around the world filed 3.4 million patent applications in 2021, up 3.6% from the previous year with offices in Asia receiving 67.6% of all applications worldwide.
Strong growth in local patent filings in China (+5.5%), the Republic of Korea (+2.5%) and India (+5.5%) drove the global growth in patent applications in 2021, propelling the share of Asian filings to cross the two-thirds threshold. Local patenting activity in the U.S. (-1.2%), Japan (-1.7%) and Germany (-3.9%) declined in 2021.
Most countries registered increases in trademark filing activity in 2021, with 18.1 million trademark class counts worldwide in 2021, up 5.5% on 2020. This growth in registering new brands coincided with a boom in entrepreneurial activity and venture capital deals prompted by the pandemic’s disruptions. Industrial design filing activity rose by 9.2%. The largest growth in designs was also from offices in Asia.
“The latest WIPI data show continued and sustained growth in IP filings, driven largely by increases from Asia, with other regions also trending mostly upward,”said WIPO Director General Daren Tang. “IP filing strength during the pandemic showed that people across the world continued to innovate and create despite the economic and social disruptions caused by the pandemic,” he added.
Mr. Tang noted however: “This resilience should not be taken for granted. Another economic downturn is looming and geopolitical tensions have increased. However, the challenges facing us right now such as climate change and the achievement of the UN SDGs means that we have to continue supporting innovators and creators to use the IP system to bring their ideas to reality, and create the impact that will change our lives for the better. ”
Patents
The WIPI, which compiles the latest data from some 150 national and regional IP, found a substantial rise in patent filings in China, combined with robust contributions from the IP office of the Republic of Korea and the European Patent Office. These were the main drivers of global growth in 2021.
China’s IP office received 1.59 million patent applications in 2021 of the total 3.4 million filed worldwide in 2021, which is similar in magnitude to the combined total of the next 12 offices ranked from second to 13th. China was followed by the offices of the U.S. (591,473), Japan (289,200), the Republic of Korea (237,998) and the European Patent Office (188,778). Together, these five offices accounted for 85.1% of the world total.
The majority of the top 20 offices – 15 out of 20 – received a greater number of patent applications in 2021 than in 2020. The largest increases were in South Africa (+63.9%), Israel (+18.3%), Mexico (+12.9%), Australia (+10.6%) and Singapore (+10%) – each reporting double-digit growth. In every one of these five offices, an increase in non-resident filings was the principal driver of overall growth.
Industrial designs
An estimated 1.2 million industrial design applications containing 1.5 million designs were filed worldwide in 2021. The number of designs grew by 9.2% in 2021. China’s IP office received applications containing 805,710 designs in 2021, corresponding to 53.2% of the world total. It was followed by the EUIPO (117,049), the UK (74,781), the Republic of Korea (69,248) and Türkiye (65,924). Due to Brexit, the office of the UK received 2.3 times more designs in applications in 2021 than in 2020, making it the third most active office in terms of application design count in 2021, up four positions in the world ranking within a year.
Among the top 20 offices, the UK (+128.5%), India (+67.6%), Mexico (+38.4%) and Türkiye (+38.3%) recorded strong growth in design filing activity in 2021. Increase in non-resident filing activity drove the overall growth in Mexico and the UK, while an increase in resident filing activity was the main source of the total growth for India and Türkiye.[2]
Offices located in Asia accounted for 69.3% of all designs in applications filed worldwide in 2021, up from 64.1% in 2011. Europe’s share declined from 28.9% in 2011 to 23.3% in 2021. The combined share of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Oceania was 7.4% in 2021.
The total number of industrial design registrations in force worldwide grew by 10.9% in 2021 to reach around 5.3 million. The largest number of registrations in force was in China (2.6 million), followed by the Republic of Korea (388,500), the U.S. (381,549), the EUIPO (268,150) and Japan (263,274).
Designs related to furniture and household goods (17.8%) accounted for the largest proportion of global filing activity in 2021, followed by textiles and accessories (14.7%), tools and machines (11.8%), electricity and lighting (9.9%), and ICT and audiovisual (8.5%).
(from WIPO)