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23 November 2016Patents

China drives record growth in patent applications: WIPO

China drove record growth in patent applications during 2015, with more than 1 million applications filed in the Chinese patent office within a single year for the first time ever.

This is one of the findings of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) annual report, “World Intellectual Property Indicators”, released today, November 23.

Global patent application filings increased by 7.8% to 2.9 million in 2015, the sixth straight year of rising demand for patent protection.

China contributed towards that growth, as it received 174,000 of the “nearly” 208,000 additional filings in 2015. The country accounted for 84% of total growth.

China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) received around 1.1 million filings, which totalled almost as many applications as the next three offices combined: the US (589,410), Japan (318,721) and Korea (213,694).

In his foreword, director general of WIPO, Francis Gurry, said: “It is encouraging to report that intellectual property activity saw healthy growth in 2015.”

China also drove an increase in trademark applications.

WIPO estimated that 5.98 million applications were filed last year, which was 15.3% more than in 2014 and represents the highest growth since 2000.

The IP organisation gathered its statistics on trademarks by using the Nice Classification, an international classification of goods and services for registering trademarks.

SIPO and the US Patent and Trademark Office led the class count with approximately 2.83 million and 517,297, respectively. They have been the “top two offices” since 2000, according to the report.

In the top 20 offices, 18 had more trademark filings last year than in 2014. Japan reported double-digit growth with an increase of 43% and Italy with 32.6%.

However, applications in Turkey declined by -1.9% and in Russia by -8.6%.

The report can be viewed in full  here.

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