More Indian and Chinese patent applications
Innovators from around the world submitted 3.46 million patent applications in 2022, marking a third consecutive year of growth, according to WIPO’s annual World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report. The increase in the number of applications is largely due to more patent applications from China and India. The number of applications for registration of trademarks and industrial designs decreased between years.
A total of 3.46 million patent applications were filed with the world's intellectual property offices in 2022, which is a 1.7% increase from the previous year. Almost half of these applications are Chinese, and their number increased by 3.1% year-on-year. The second largest number of patent applications came from the United States, followed by Japan, South Korea and Germany. The number of Indian patent applications increased the most, by 31.6% year-on-year.
Around 1.8 million patents were granted in 2022 and there are a total of around 17.3 million patents in force in the world.
Notably, only 17.1% of inventors registered for international PCT patent applications published in 2022 are women. Notably, the most neutral gender ratio in applications is in Chinese (47.9%) and Turkish applications (34.0%). Looking at the gender balance in different classes of applications, it is least skewed in biotechnology, where women make up 30% of inventors.
Trademark applications fell by 14.5% worldwide in 2022, following a very large increase in applications in 2020 and 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the commercialization of a variety of new products and services. Similarly, the number of applications for industrial design registration decreased by 2.1%, after a large number of applications over the past four years.
More information on the status of international intellectual property rights can be found on the WIPO dashboard. Information on applications for the registration of intellectual property rights and registrations valid in Iceland can be accessed on the dashboard of the Icelandic Intellectual Property Office.