Kimberly Hamilton
Nov 21, 2022
Featured

Worldwide IP Filings Reached New All-Time Highs in 2021, Asia Drives Growth

Global intellectual property (IP) filings for patents, trademarks and designs reached new heights in 2021, showing the resilience of the global innovation ecosystem during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

Worldwide IP Filings Reached New All-Time Highs in 2021, Asia Drives Growth
Global IP filings for patents, trademarks and designs reached new heights in 2021, showing the resilience of the global innovation ecosystem during the COVID-19 pandemic.