TM filings rebound in 2021, Asia drives patents: WIPO
Last year was the fastest year-on-year growth for the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) international trademark system since 2005.
Madrid System trademark filings declined at the height of the pandemic in 2020 but rebounded in 2021, up 14.4% last year to reach 73,100 filings.
Strong growth in filings originated from France, Germany, the UK and the US. US-based applicants (13,276) filed the largest number of international trademark applications, followed by those located in Germany (8,799), China (5,272), France (4,888) and the UK (4,215).
With 171 Madrid applications, L’Oréal of France became the top filer of international trademark applications in 2021, surpassing pharmaceutical company Novartis of Switzerland. WIPO received 55 more applications from L’Oréal in 2021 than in 2020.
WIPO director general Daren Tang said: “WIPO's global IP services help local enterprises go global by making it easier and cheaper to promote their businesses overseas.
“Although COVID-19 related restrictions have kept humans and families apart, it cannot stop the worldwide movement of fresh ideas, innovative products and new services.”
On the patent front, applications filed via WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) grew by 0.9% in 2021 to reach 277,500 applications—the highest-ever level.
Asia “manifested its lead as the largest origin of international patent applications”, said WIPO, accounting for 54.1% of all applications in 2021. This is up from 38.5% in 2011.
China led the patent charge, submitting 69,540 applications, 0.9% year-on-year growth. This was followed by the US (59,570 applications, +1.9%), Japan (50,260 applications, –0.6%), the Republic of Korea (20,678 applications, +3.2%) and Germany (17,322 applications, –6.4%).
Huawei Technologies, a China-based telecoms company, was the top filer with 6,952 published PCT applications. US-based Qualcomm took the second spot with 3,931 applications and Samsung Electronics of the Republic of Korea placed third, with 3,041 applications.
Qualcomm reported the fastest growth (80.9%) in the number of published applications in 2021 among the top ten filers. Filings related to digital communication by Qualcomm almost doubled—from 1,486 in 2020 to 2,951 in 2021.
In terms of educational institutions, the University of California continued to dominate, with 551 published applications.
Zhejiang University placed second with 306 applications, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (227), Tsinghua University (201) and Stanford University (194). Four universities from China and four from the US place among the top ten universities, with one each from Japan and Singapore.
Meanwhile, at WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center, trademark owners filed a record 5,128 cases under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), up 22% on 2020. This surge pushed WIPO cybersquatting cases to almost 56,000 and the total number of domain names covered past the 100,000 mark.
WIPO’s mediation and arbitration cases involving copyright, patents, trademarks and other types of disputes involving technology also saw a record year.
In 2021, the 44.5% increase on the year before included 163 mediation, arbitration and expedited arbitration cases.
The disputes involved a range of IP related areas, with copyright (41%), patents (37%), and trademarks (16%) most common.
“Particular increases concerned mediation requests in fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory disputes (FRAND), copyright disputes … and international IP disputes referred by the Chinese courts,” said WIPO.
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