(Publ. 5 DEC 2016) Around 2.9 million patent applications were filed worldwide in 2015, representing a 7.8% increase over 2014. The patent office in China, SIPO, became the first office to receive more than a million applications in a single year and by that setting a record by receiving the most applications in 2015. Sweden as a single country has an outstanding position in the world by having the 13th place. This is according to WIPO:s annual World Intellectual Property Indicators report.
SIPO, with 1,101,864 filings, they received almost as many applications as the combined total for the patent offices in Japan 318,721, Korea 213,694, and the U.S. 589,410. The European Patent Office (EPO) received 160,028 applications. Together, the top five offices accounted for 82.5% of the world total in 2015. Among the top five offices, China (+18.7%) had the fastest growth, followed by the EPO (+4.8%), the U.S. (+1.8%) and the Republic of Korea (+1.6%). In contrast, Japan’s patent office saw a 2.2% decrease. The amount of applications includes both filings from residents as well as from overseas innovators.
Filed trademark applications had a 15.3% increase to 5,983,000 applications. China, with a class count of 2.83 million, saw by far the highest trademark filing activity in 2015. It was followed by the U.S., 517,297, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO); 366,383, Japan, 345,070 and India, 289,843. Among the top 20 offices, Japan (+43%), Italy (+32.6%), China (+27.4%), India (+21.9%) and the Republic of Korea (+13.9%) reported double-digit growth in 2015.
Global industrial design applications filed in 2015 grew by 2.3%, rebounding from a sharp decrease recorded in 2014 when there was a large drop-off in filings in China. Designers across the world filed 872,800 applications containing a total number of 1.1 million designs included in the industrial design applications. The unmatched figures reveal that some IP offices are accepting more than one design in each application.
In general, the global growth was mainly due to increases in applications filed in China, the Republic of Korea and the U.S.
