(23 November 2016, Geneva) Innovators in China powered global patent applications to a new record in 2015, filing more than a million applications for the first time ever within a single year amid rising worldwide demand for intellectual property rights that undergird economic activity.
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.
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.
The very detailed press release is here.
Videos: Press conference Video (watch on YouTube) | Report highlights from WIPO DG Gurry Video (watch on YouTube) and Chief Economist Carsten Fink Video (watch on YouTube).
