On 6 November 2023 the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) published the report on IP activities register around the world in 2022. Starting from data provided by national and regional intellectual property offices, the WIPO report examines 2022 filings statistics and analyzes the trends of the economy based on creative activities.
Patent Applications increase
In 2022 innovators from all over the world filed 3.46 million patent applications, a 1.7% increase over the previous year, confirming thus a third consecutive year of growth.
China, United States of America, Republic of Korea and Germany are the countries with the highest number of patent filings in 2022. Around 1.58 million patent applications come from China (+3.1%), a number that is about half of all global patent applications.
The US with 505,539 applications (1.1%), Japan with 405,361 applications (-1.6%), Republic of Korea with 272,315 applications (+1.9%) ad Germany with 155,896 applications (-4.8%), follow.
India is the country with the highest growth rate, with an increase of 31.6% compared to 2021. 7th on the rankings (55,718 patent applications filed).
Trademarks and designs applications decrease
After an extraordinary surge in the two-year period 2020-2021, when the pandemic accelerated the change and stirred the introductions of new goods and services on the market, trademark and design applications drastically declined in 2022.
The number of trademarks applications decreased of 14.5% compared to 2021, together with the number of claimed classes, marking thus the first annual reduction since 2009.
In contrast with respect to global statistics there are Russia (+11.8%), Turkey (+13.2%) and Indonesia (+16.3%). As well as for trademarks applications, China is still the country with the highest number of filings (7,7 million applications), followed by the United States of America (945,571 applications).
Likewise, the activity of industrial designs registered a decrease of 2.1% after the growth of the previous four years. Against this trend stays Italy, which with 29,611 designs applications registered an increase of 10.9% compared to 2021.
The warning of WIPO General Director
In publishing this report, WIPO’s General Director Daren Tang highlighted that the filings of intellectual property titles challenged the pandemic and grew worldwide to increase the levels of innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship and digitalization.
In this context, developing countries recorded the highest growth rates, proving to be the most determined to harness innovation and people’s creative potential.
Nevertheless – the Director stated – geopolitical instability and uncertainty on economic prospectives weigh on the global innovation ecosystem and venture capital funding are dropping in many parts of the world. Director Tang thus encouraged “investors to pursue quality, but not at the expenses of supporting good ideas that can change the world for the better”.
Ilaria Feriti