At the global level, Intellectual Property (IP) filings, including trademarks, patents, and industrial designs, rebounded last year (as per the latest data presented by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), thereby indicating the resilience of human innovation and creation despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
On the contrary, the filing activity of both patent and Trademark Applications during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 (the Great Recession) had contracted sharply.
As per the World Intellectual Property Indicators report (compiling new data from 150 national and regional authorities), the trademark filing activity rose by 13.7% globally, patents by 1.6%, and industrial designs by 2%.
India has shown a pretty decent improvement in filings related to IP, with higher applications in trademarks (over 15%) and patents (10%), specifically driven by the ones filed in the pharmaceutical sector in 2020.
In 2020, the IP Office in China recorded the highest number of trademark applications. Also, India left behind Japan to secure the 5th position in terms of trademark filing activity.
The ultimate factor influencing such strong growth in the global trademark filing activity is the robust growth in products and services related to pharmaceuticals, surgical, dental, and medical goods, and advertising and business management.
Concerning pharmaceuticals, the number of filings increased from 4.1% in 2019 to 4.6% in 2020, while those of surgical, medical, and dental goods increased from 1.5% to 2.3%. Such trends were mirrored by some nations that saw significant increases in their respective trademark filing activities. For instance, India’s near about 15.4% growth in its trademark filing activity was driven majorly by the applications filed in the pharmaceutical sXctor.
Furthermore, global patent filing activity returned to growth last year after experiencing the first dip in a decade in 2019 due to a decline in China. In 2020, the IP office in China reported 1.5 million Patent Applications, followed by the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the European Patent Office (EPO). These five offices, together, accounted for 85.1% of the patent applications filed throughout the world.
Among the top ten IP offices, only three nations, including the Republic of Korea (3.6%), India (5.9%), and China (6.9%), recorded growth in the applications filed in 2020.
The Director-General at WIPO, Daren Tang, expressed his views on the strong growth in trademark filings (in particular) in 2020. He said that the double-digit growth in the trademark filing activity shows how enterprises worldwide have brought new products and services to the market despite the massive economic shook.
It is interesting to note that IP’s center of gravity has now shifted to Asia, considering the number of applications filed from the region as per the latest data recorded by WIPO. A decade ago, half of the overall ten IP-related applications were filed in Asia, and, in 2020, this number went close to seven. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com
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