WIPO has published the 2020 edition "World Intellectual Property Indicators" (https://www.wipo.int/publications/en/details.jsp?id=4526&plang=EN) which provides a general picture of IP activities worldwide based on statistics from the offices globally located.
The data provided by the WIPO report on intellectual property indicators relating to the filing, registration and renewals of patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, microorganisms and plant varieties protection in 2019.
In 2019, trademark and industrial design filing activity increased by 5.9% and 1.3%, respectively. A 3% decline in global patent applications was driven by a drop in filings by Chinese residents. Excluding China, global patent filings rose 2.3% – the highest rate of growth in years.
Patents
The National Intellectual Property Administration of the People’s Republic of China (CNIPA) received 1.4 million patent applications in 2019. This is more than twice the amount received by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The USPTO ranked sec-ond, with 621,453 applications, followed by the Japan Patent Office (JPO), with 307,969 applications, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), with 218,975 applications, and the European Patent Office (EPO), with 181,479 applications. Together, the top five offices accounted for 84.7% of the world total in 2019.
Among the top five offices, the Republic of Korea (+4.3%), the EPO (+4.1%) and the U.S. (+4.1%) recorded a growth in applications in 2019; in contrast, both China (−9.2%) and Japan (−1.8%) saw a decline.
Trademarks
An estimated 11.5 million trademark applications were filed worldwide in 2019.
The office of China’s class count of 7.8 million was followed by a count of 672,681 at the office of the U.S. These two top-ranked of fices were followed by those of both Japan (546,244), the Islamic Republic of Iran (454,925) and by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) (407,712).
Of the top 20 offices, the largest increases were in Brazil (+22.3%) and Viet Nam (+19.3%), followed by the Islamic Republic of Iran (+18.4%), the Russian Federation (+16.5%), Turkey (+15.5%).
Industrial Designs
In 2019, about 1.04 million industrial design applications were filed worldwide. This represents an increase of 1.7% on 2018. The office of China accounted for 52.3% of designs in applications filed worldwide in 2019, representing 711,617 designs. It was followed by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) (113,319), the Republic of Korea (69,360), the United States of America (U.S.) (49,848) and Turkey (46,202).
Of the top 20 offices, the largest increases were the Russian Federation (+22%), the Islamic Republic of Iran (+19.3%) and Australia (+10.3%).