Both Chinese and foreign company are aggressively filing patent applications in China in a bid to take advantage of IP protection and promote commercialization of their IPRs, according to the World Intellectual Property Indicator (WIPI) issued by the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Innovators across the globe filed 3.17 million patent applications in 2017, up 5.8% for an eighth straight yearly increase, according to WIPI report. Global trademark filing activity totaled 12.39 million, while that for industrial designs reached 1.24 million. China recorded the highest application volume for each of these IP rights, according to WIPO report. Filing applications in overseas market reflected that applicants want to expand market share in the targeted countries. In 2017, the U.S. applicants filed 230,931 patent applicants overseas, ranking the first position in the world. China ranked the fifth place with 60,310, increased by 15%. In terms of trademark, in 2017, China National Intellectual Property Administration had the highest volume of filing activity with a class count of around 5.7 million, followed by the U.S. (613,921), Japan (560,269), the European Union Intellectual Property Office (371,508) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (358,353). Among the top 20 offices, the Islamic Republic of Iran (+87.9%) and China (+55.2%) reported high annual growth.

Source: China IP News