Analysis of trend of trademark filings by industry with Taiwan IPO and WIPI 2024 statistics

　The World Intellectual Property Organizations (WIPO) published the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2024: WIPI 2024 on November 7, 2024 to make public the data regarding the global trademark filings, number of registrations, average pendency times for first office action and final decision, statistics of final decisions, application class count per unit of GDP and application class count per million population of each country throughout 2023.  Taiwan IPO released the “Analysis of Trends in Trademark Applications Filed by the Industry from 2019 through 2023” to present a brief analysis and comparison between Taiwan’s data of filings in 2023 and the WIPO 2024 as summarized below.
　　
　Throughout 2023, the worldwide trademark applications and application class counts declined for the second consecutive year, marking an end of a steady growing trend that had lasted from 2009 to 2021.  Following a slump of 15.7% and 14.5% in the previous year, the pace of decline eased to 1.3% and 2%, respectively.  This suggests that trademark filing activity has largely returned to normal levels after the surge in trademark filings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the past two years.  In spite of the downturn in the number of applications in the past two years, the number of worldwide trademark filings remains nearly 3.5 times higher than those of 2009.  China’s trademark application class count reached above 7.2 million classes, holding onto the top position and largely surpassing the US, by nearly tenfold, at the 2^nd position with 739,000 class counts.  In addition, Taiwan’s application class count was close to 115,000 classes to rank 19^th globally, while Taiwan’s registration class count was 96,000 to come in 18^th globally as well.

　In 2023, Taiwan saw a drop in the number of applications and class counts by 3.4% and 6.68%, respectively.  Notably, Taiwan experienced a 5.4% rise in the number of trademark applications and also a 2.7% increase in the class count for the past five years.  The top four industry sectors of the non-resident filings in Taiwan were “Research and technology”, “Health”, “Agriculture”, “Clothing and accessories”, while those of the non-resident WIPO trademark filings were “Research and technology”, “Health”, “Clothing and accessories”, and “Leisure and education”.  The non-resident applications filed for the sector of “Health” at the Taiwan IPO strikingly outstripped those reported in the WIPO statistics, which reveals that non-resident applicants place importance on their brand development in that sector in Taiwan.

　In spite of the short-term industrial impact and economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic raging from 2019 through 2021, businesses worldwide maintain their sustained efforts and entrepreneurship spirit to seek business opportunities by developing the goods and services resulting from the pandemic, which leads to a surge in global trademark filing activity.  With the pandemic winding down, businesses around the world began to struggle with other crises of high interest rates and shrinking venture capital in economy and also instability in geopolitics in 2023.  The global economy has not fully recovered to the pre-pandemic level, but there were still nearly 11.63 million trademark applications filed worldwide for more than 15.23 million classes.  The class counts of non-resident trademark applications slightly dropped to 27.6%.  In spite of that, Taiwan remains an attractive destination for international businesses, thanks to its robust democratic rule of law, clean governance, and open and transparent economic environment.  In addition to that, the government has actively promoted foreign investment with policies including negotiation of free trade agreement or other investment accords with key international partners.  Moreover, located in the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan is also recognized as a global leader in intellectual property protection.  According to the Investment Commission, MOEA, overseas Chinese and foreign investment in 2023 reached its third highest level for the past sixteen years, behind only by figures in 2022 and 2018, which underscores that foreign businesses are still optimistic about Taiwan’s industrial supply chains, skilled workforce, sound investment climate, and democratic rule of law.  Therefore, over the long term, trademark applications filed by foreign applicants in Taiwan are expected to continue growing positively.  (Released 2025.02.08)  
/CCS