The last edition of the “World Intellectual Property Indicators”, released by Wipo (World Intellectual Property Organization) in mid-December 2015, shows the trend in 2014. In total, innovators filed about 2.7 million patent applications worldwide, up 4.5% from 2013. For each year since 2003, with the exception of 2009, patent applications have grown. Patent offices receiving the highest number of applications in 2014 were China, with 928,177 filings, followed by the US (578,802), Japan (325,989), the Republic of Korea (210,292) and the European Patent Office (152,662). If the current trend continues, China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) is set to become the first office to receive a million applications in a single year. China (+12.5%), the EPO (+3.2%), the Republic of Korea (+2.8%) and the US (+1.3%) saw growth in 2014, while Japan recorded a 0.7% decline. Computer technology (7.8% of total) saw most applications worldwide, followed by electrical machinery (7.4%), measurement (4.8%) and digital communication (4.6%). Digital communication and computer technology have been the two fastest growing technological fields over the past 20 years.
Besides, the total number of trademark registrations issued worldwide in 2014 increased markedly by 16.3% to reach 3.49 million. China accounted for most of this growth. Along with China (+36%), Argentina (+19%), Brazil (+132%) and Turkey (+12%) saw large increases in registration activity in 2014. As regards to the industrial design, for the first time in more than 20 years, the total number of designs contained in all industrial design applications filed worldwide in 2014 dropped by 8.1% to about 1.14 million in 2014. China received applications containing 564,555 designs in 2014, followed by the EU’s OHIM-Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (98,273), the Republic of Korea (68,441), Germany (61,054) and Turkey (48,799). China (-14.4%), Turkey (-4.5%) and the Republic of Korea (-2.3%) saw lower filing activity in 2014 than in the previous year, while Germany (+6.6%) and OHIM (+1.3%) saw increased filing activity.
