Spain among the top 20 countries in number of trademark and industrial design applications, according to WIPO's new World Intellectual Property Indicators 2023 Report

The International Organization of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has published the new World Intellectual Property Indicators 2023 Report. This 2023 report contains data for the year 2022 and provides an overview of the use of the industrial and intellectual property (IP) system worldwide.

Spain ranks among the top 20 countries in trademarks and industrial designs, specifically 14th in number of active trademark registrations and 13th in design applications. However, this year it falls to 21st position in PCT applications, separated by just 40 applications, from 20th place.

Patents

In this new edition, marked by economic uncertainty due, among other factors, to inflation, there is an increase in innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. In 2022, 3.5 million patent applications have been filed. This figure represents an increase of 1.7% over 2021, making it the year with the highest number of applications ever filed.

Regarding gender-related data, the WIPO report analyzes the numbers of women inventors in the top 20 countries with the highest number of published PCTs in 2022. In that list, women inventors made up 17.1% of the total number of inventors in published PCT applications. Spain is ranked twenty-first in this edition. On the other hand, the percentage of women inventors of PCT applications published in Spain once again places our country at the top of the ranking, with a figure of over 25%.

Trademarks

In 2022, 11.8 million trademark applications have been filed worldwide, down 15.7% (2.2 million applications) from 2021. This decline ends a 12-year period of growth. Even so, the number of trademark applications in 2022 was approximately three and a half times higher than in 2008.

Trademarks are an industrial property title that is maintained indefinitely upon payment of the corresponding renewal fees. Calculating the number of active trademark registrations in the 152 intellectual property offices around the world, an increase of 9.4% is observed with respect to the year 2021 (82.5 million trademark registrations). The offices with the highest number of registrations are China (42.7 million registrations in force), the United States (3.1 million) and India (2.9 million). Spain is in fourteenth position, with 832,268 registrations in force.

Industrial designs

In 2022, around 1.1 million industrial design applications were filed worldwide, a 3% decrease compared to 2021.

The offices of China, EUIPO and Turkey are positioned at the top of the list of offices with the highest number of design applications received, with 798,112, 109,132 and 84,111 respectively. Spain occupies the thirteenth position with 11,113 applications.

The top 20 offices together account for 94.6% of design applications.

 Finally, it should be noted that the industrial sectors with the highest number of applications are furniture and household goods, textiles and accessories, tools and machines, and electricity and lighting, accounting for 54.3% of the total number of classes registered worldwide.

More information: 

World Intellectual Property Indicators