Analysis of trademark filing trends across industries with Taiwan IPO and WIPI 2025 statistics over the past five years

　The World Intellectual Property Organizations (WIPO) released the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2025, the WIPI 2025, on November 12, 2025 to make public the statistics on global trademark activity in 2024, including the global trademark filings and total class counts, number of registrations and total class counts, average pendency times for first office action and final decision, statistics of final decisions, distribution of the top ten industry classes, application class count per unit of GDP and application class count per million population of each country throughout 2024.  Taiwan IPO released the “Analysis of Trends in Trademark Applications Filed by the Industry from 2020 through 2024” to present a brief analysis and comparison between Taiwan’s data of filings in 2024 and the WIPO 2025 as summarized below.

　1.  The worldwide trademark filing activity reached around 11.7 million applications in 2024, which represents an increase of around 29,000 filings from the previous year and only a marginal growth of 0.3%.  Following the declines in two consecutive years by 15.7% and 14.5% in 2022 and 2023, the rebound in 2024 reflected a return of the global trademark activity to the positive growth territory, even though the pace of recovery was limited.  In spite of the recent fluctuations, the trademark filings in 2024 outnumbered the pre-COVID level recorded in 2019 by 2%.  In a long-term perspective, the upward trend remains pronounced as the trademark applications in 2024 were approximately three times the level recorded in 2010 largely as a result of the multiple years of two-digit growths over the past 15 years.  In terms of class counts, there was a slight downturn in global filing activity by 0.1% in 2024, totaling around 15.23 million classes, which reflects an increase in the number of applications but a decrease in the classes of goods or services designated per application.  Moreover, the top five sources of global trademark filings in 2024 were China, the U.S., Russia, India, and Brazil, which accounted for 61.5% of the class counts of total global applications.  Among them, Brazil experienced the strongest year-on-year rise by 10.4% in application class counts, surpassing India at 7.4% and also Russia at 2.9%.  On the contrary, China and the U.S. saw their respective drops in the class counts of trademark filings by 1.5%.  In addition, among the global top 20 filing countries, Taiwan filed more than 112,000 applications, ranking 19th globally and maintaining the same position as in the previous year.  As to class counts of registered trademarks, Taiwan’s registrations were filed for more than 90,000 classes, staying at the 18th place.  

　2.  Observations suggest that the number of trademark applications with Taiwan IPO and class counts fell by 1.28% and 1.92%, respectively.  In the past five years, growth was recorded only in 2021 when applications and class counts rose by 1.89% and 2.98%, respectively.  Despite of the declines in both indicators, the rate of decline moderated significantly compared with 2023, when applications and class counts slipped by 3.4% and 6.68%, respectively.  

　3.  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”.  Compared with the global average, the non-resident applications filed for the sector of “Health” at the Taiwan IPO accounted for 16.9% of the total non-resident applications, strikingly outstripping those reported in the WIPO statistics at 14.1%, which reveals that non-resident applicants place importance on their brand development in that sector in Taiwan.
　　
　Looking back at the period from 2019 to 2021, global economic and trade activities were profoundly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially service sectors, including tourism and aviation.  At the same time, the demand for pandemic-related supplies, medical products, and goods associated with the stay-at-home economy largely increased, which prompted businesses to accelerate product and service innovation and drove global trademark filing activity to record highs.  In 2022 when the pandemic heavily intensified to its peak, rising inflation, monetary tightening through rate hike cycle, and escalating geopolitical risks emerged in succession.  As a result, the momentum of global trade growth weakened and trademark filing volumes obviously declined.   Following the WHO’s announcement on May 5, 2023 that COVID-19 no longer constituted a ”Public Health Emergency of International Concern”, global trademark filing activity gradually recovered to reach approximately 11.7 million applications covering 15.23 million classes in 2024.  These figures reveal that businesses’ demand for brand development and market expansion remains stable.  

　In 2024, there had been around 90,000 trademark applications filed with Taiwan IPO, covering more than 112,000 classes, placing Taiwan 19th globally.  In addition, Taiwan ranked 18^th globally in the number of class counts of registered trademarks, unchanged from the previous year.    Also, the class counts of trademark applications filed by foreign applicants grew from 27.6% to 29.3%, which demonstrates foreign applicants’ confidence in Taiwan’s market environment and institutional framework.  It also reflects Taiwan’s strong democratic governance and rule of law, well-established and complete infrastructure and logistics networks that facilitate businesses’ manufacturing operations and international transportation.  Moreover, Taiwan’s open and transparent economic environment and mature IP protection mechanism, the government’s active promotion of foreign investment and free trade and investment agreements execution have further enhanced Taiwan’s international appeal and are expected to support continued positive growth in trademark activity.  (Released 2026.04.01)  
/CCS