WIPO: China again leads IP filings

On 3 December 2018, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published its annual report on World Intellectual Property Indicators 2018 (WIPI). The report analyzes the IP activity around the world in the previous year 2017 and gives an insight on the overall number of filings, registrations and maintenance of trademarks, patents, utility models and designs.

                                                                                                   Source: WIPI

As in the year 2016, China remained the overall leader according to volume of applications for all intellectual property rights. The highest growth of filing activity was then monitored in the field of trademark applications, when in just one year the number grew from 9.77 million to 12.39 million trademark filings.

Trademarks – overall number of filings in 2017: 12.387.600

• China: 5.739.823
• U.S.: 613.921
• Japan: 560.269

The most trademark applications were accounted in Asia with 66,6 %. Europe´s share fell to 17,7 %, third is a combined share of Africa, Latin America, Caribbean and Oceania with 9,2 % and the last is North America with 6,4 %.

In 2017, most of the trademark applications were sought for the field of advertising and business management. The second most “common class” of application was clothing, then computers/software and instruments and then followed by the education and entertainment sector.  

Patents – overall number of filings in 2017: 3.168.900

• China: 1.381.594
• U.S.: 606.956
• Japan: 318.479

Utility models – overall number of filings in 2017: 1.761.200

• China: 1.687.593
• Germany: 13.301
• Russian Federation: 10.643

Industrial designs – overall number of filings in 2017: 1.242.100

• China: 628.658
• EUIPO: 111.021
• Republic of Korea: 67.357

For the whole report and rankings for 2017, please click here.