Global intellectual property (IP) filings for patents, trademarks and designs reached new heights in 2021, showing the resilience of the global innovation ecosystem during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bucking the trend from previous economic downturns, IP filings remained strong during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and soared in 2021, WIPO’s World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report showed.

Innovators around the world filed 3.4 million patent applications in 2021, up 3.6% from the previous year with offices in Asia receiving 67.6% of all applications worldwide.

Strong growth in local patent filings in China (+5.5%), the Republic of Korea (+2.5%) and India (+5.5%) drove the global growth in patent applications in 2021, propelling the share of Asian filings to cross the two-thirds threshold.  Local patenting activity in the U.S. (-1.2%), Japan (-1.7%) and Germany (-3.9%) declined in 2021.

Most countries registered increases in trademark filing activity in 2021, with 18.1 million trademark class counts worldwide in 2021, up 5.5% on 2020.  This growth in registering new brands coincided with a boom in entrepreneurial activity and venture capital deals prompted by the pandemic’s disruptions. Industrial design filing activity rose by 9.2%. The largest growth in designs was also from offices in Asia.