World Intellectual Property Indicators – 2015 Edition

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialized agency of the United Nations headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, has recently published the Global Innovation Index (GII) Report about the latest trends in intellectual property (IP) activity worldwide. Patent and Trademark filings showed a strong growth in 2014 while industrial design applications declined for the first time in two decades. Trademarks Trademark applications reached a new record in 2014 with a total number of 7.45 million classes specified in applications. As you can see below the increase of 6% was driven by filings in the Trademark Office in China with 2.22 million trademark application, followed by the United States of America (471,228), the European Union (333,443), France (269,837) and Japan (242,073). Most of the applications are made in the advertising and business management sector (9.8% of the total filing activity), followed by the clothing industry and by scientific, photographic, measuring instruments, recording equipment, computers and software. Below you can see the trademark applications by top three sectors. In Germany, most applications are made in the area of research and technology area. Patents Innovators marked a worldwide annual rise of 4.5 % in 2014 by filing 2.7 million patent applications. The top five Patent Offices worldwide are China with 928,177 applications in 2014, followed by the United States (578,802), Japan (325,989), the Republic of Korea (210,292) and the European Patent Office (152,662) (see below). Most applications worldwide in 2014 were made in the fields of computer technology, electrical machinery, measurement, digital communication and medical technology. The last two sectors have been the two fastest growing technological fields since 1995. Designs After a 20 year period of growth, the total number of industrial designs dropped by 8.1% to about 1.14 million applications in 2014. The fall was mainly due to a sharp decrease in filings by Chinese residents. For more detailed information and the full report including charts, overviews and other statistics please see:  http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_941_2015.pdf