The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) recently released the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2022.
What is the World Intellectual Property Indicators?
The World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) is an authoritative report that provides an overview of activities in areas of patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, microorganisms, plant variety protection, geographical indications and creative economy. It is released every year by WIPO. The WIPI 2022 compiled the data from around 150 national and regional intellectual property offices across the globe.
What are the key findings of the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2022?
- In 2021, around 3.4 million patent applications were filed across the world. This is a 3.6 per cent increase from the previous year.
- The top two countries with highest number of patent filings are India and China.
- Local patenting activities in the US, Japan and Germany have declined in 2021.
- The European Patent Office (EPO) and South Africa made significant contributions to the overall growth of patents.
- India received 61,573 patent applications last year, an increase from 56,771 in 2020.
- Almost 43 per cent of the Indian patent applications are local and filed by resident applicants. Some 18.5 per cent of total published applications in the country are related to pharmaceuticals.
- According to this report, 57.3 per cent of the patent applications filed in India were by non-residents. The share of non-resident applications is very high in countries like Australia (90.8%), Canada (87.3%), the EPO (55.6%), the United States (55.7%), Brazil (80.7%), Indonesia (84.1%), Mexico (93.1%) and Singapore (86.1%).
- India recorded a 16.5 per cent growth in patent grants in 2021. However, the percentage of the pending patent applications has increased to 91.5 percent during the same period.
- India also witnessed a 6.7 per cent increase in the filing of the number of trademark applications. About 42.4 per cent of non-resident trademark filing in Indian offices were from the US, China and Germany.
- China, the US, the EU, India and the UK accounted for some 65 per cent of the worldwide trademark filings.