China leads world in patent applications

China accounted for an eye-popping 98% of total growth. China’s State Intellectual Property Office received a record total of 1.3 million patents for the year, followed by the US Patent and Trademark Office at 605,571, the Japan Patent Office at 318,381, the South Korean Intellectual Property Office at 208,830 and the European Patent Office at 159,358.

In addition, trademark applications rose by 16.4% to about 7 million, and worldwide industrial design applications grew by 10.4% to close to 1 million; both categories were also driven by growth in China. China’s office had the highest volume of trademark filing activity with a class count of around 3.7 million, followed by the US at 545,587, Japan at 451,320, the EU at 369,970 and India at 313,623.

China’s office received applications for global industrial design filing activity containing 650,344 designs in 2016, or 52% of the world total. The EU followed with 104,522, then South Korea (69,120); Germany (56,188) and Turkey (46,305).

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