WIPO IP Facts and Figures 2021
WIPO IP Facts and Figures 2021 is an overview of intellectual property activity based on the latest available year of complete statistics. The publisher is the World Intellectual Property Organization.
IP Facts and Figures 2021 from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides an overview of intellectual property (IP) activity using the latest available year of complete statistics. The figures presented are drawn from WIPO’s more comprehensive World Intellectual Property Indicators 2021.
IP Facts and Figures serves as a quick reference guide covering 4 types of industrial property which are patents, utility models, trademarks, and industrial designs.
The report focuses primarily on application data, the most often used measure of IP activity. Trademark application data refer to class counts – the number of classes specified in applications.
The reason why application data is the best tool to measure international IP activities is that for example, in the trademark field, trademark application data provides the best comparison of international trademark filing activity across IP offices. This is important because some jurisdictions may allow multiple classes of goods and services to be specified in a single application, whereas others require a separate application for each class.
The same is accounted for industrial design data which refers to design counts: the number of designs contained in applications.
Notable accomplishments in IP
Unless otherwise stated, all data refer to activity that occurred in the calendar year 2020 and the annual growth from 2019 to 2020.
Due to the continual updating of statistics, the data presented in this publication may differ from that previously published and from the data available on WIPO’s web pages.
In 2020, there have been some major accomplishments in the IP field worldwide. Specifically:
- Patents in force worldwide grew by 5.9% to reach around 15.9 million in 2020. The highest numbers of patents in force were recorded in the United States of America (3.3 million), China (3.1 million), and Japan (2 million).
- Active trademark registrations worldwide are estimated to reach 64.4 million in 2020 – up 11.2% in 2019, with 30.2 million in China alone, followed by 2.6 million in the U.S. and 2.4 million in India. In addition, Asia accounted for 72% of all trademark filing activity worldwide in 2020.
- Industrial design registrations in force worldwide grew by 11% in 2020 to reach around 4.8 million. The most registrations in force were in China (2.2 million), the U.S. (371,870), and the Republic of Korea (369,526). Additionally, China’s IP Office received 55% of all industrial design filing activity worldwide in 2020.
For the full, complete report of WIPO IP Facts and Figures 2021, please download it here.
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (2021). IP Facts and Figures 2021. Geneva: WIPO
