India among top 10 in WIPO’s patent rankings

India is among the top 10 in World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO’s) rankings across three categories—patents, trademarks, and industrial design.

In 2023,  India saw the fastest growth in patent applications (up 15.7% year-on-year) among the top 20, marking the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth.

Finland (up 11.2%) is the only top 20 origin with double-digit growth in 2023, driven by increases in resident and abroad filings.

With 64,480 patent applications, India ranked sixth globally as resident filings accounted for over half of all submissions (at 55.2%)—a first for the country.

The patent office also granted 149.4% more patents in 2023 when compared with the previous year.

The report showed that Indian patents and industrial design applications doubled from 2018 to 2023, and trademark applications rose by 60% from 2023 to 2024.

Global patenting activity zoomed in 2023 as applications surpassed 3.5 million for the first time, marking the fourth consecutive year of growth.

The WIPO serves global innovators and creators, ensuring that their ideas travel safely to the market and improve lives everywhere.

Residents in China, the Republic of Korea, the US, Japan, and India, who filed most patents were key drivers of global growth last year, WIPO said.

“Continuing a longer-term trend, offices in Asia accounted for 68.7%, 66.7%, and 69% of global patent, trademark, and industrial design filings in 2023,” WIPO director-general Daren Tang said.

IP filings are highly concentrated within Asia, with the offices of China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea together accounting for 91.1%, 77.0%, and 87.2% of Asian patent, trademark, and industrial design filing, he said.

Global industrial design filing activity also grew in 2023, rising by 2.8% to 1.52 million designs, with seven of the top 20 countries seeing double-digit growth,” Tang said.

The highest volume of filing activity came from applicants based in China, with a combined domestic and abroad application class count of around 7.4 million. This was followed by US (849,876), those based in the Russian Federation (543,692), and applicants from India (496,293) and Germany (441,293).

Demand for IP rights is growing even in the face of an uncertain economic environment.

In addition, this demand is increasingly indigenous. For example, the growth in patent filings has been driven by residents rather than by foreign innovators.

With the volumes growing, the challenge remains to improve the quality and the ability to translate IP filings into actual products and services, WIPO added.