China Innovators drive patent applications to record high
Published: Dec 02, 2016
TIOLCORP News Service
GENEVA, DEC 02, 2016: CHINA Innovators filed more than a million applications in 2015, for the first time ever within a single year, thereby driving the global patent applications to a record high. This is expected to futher increase the worldwide demand for intellectual property rights globally.
In total, innovators around the world lodged some 2.9 million patent applications in 2015, representing a 7.8% increase over 2014 and the sixth straight year of rising demand for patent protection, according to WIPO's annual World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report. Trademark applications jumped by 15.3% to about 6 million in 2015, as worldwide industrial design applications grew by 2.3% to 872,800.
2014
|
2015
|
Growth (%)
|
|
Patent applications |
2,680,900
|
2,888,800
|
7.8
|
Trademark applications |
5,187,900
|
5,983,000
|
15.3
|
Industrial design applications |
853,500
|
872,800
|
2.3
|
While Chinese innovators filed the most patent applications (1,010,406) in 2015, followed by those from the United States of America (526,296) and Japan (454,285), they are comparatively home-focused: Innovators based in China filed 42,154 applications for patents outside their own borders, while U.S.-based innovators were the most outward-looking, with 237,961 patent applications filed abroad.