On January 28, 2019, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) published online a quantitative overview of patent and trademark filings it received in 2018.
Patent
According to TIPO’s data, a total of 73,421 patent applications were received by the TIPO in 2018, a slight decrease of 1% from the previous year.
Of the three types of patent filings, invention applications grew by 3% (compared with the data of 2017, same below), showing a steady increase since 2017. Broken down by applicant’s nationalities, the number of invention filings by domestic applicants is 18,365 (an annual increase of 1%) while foreign applicants filed 29,064 inventions in 2018 (an annual increase of 4%).
When combining the numbers of all three types of patent filings, the momentum of foreign applicants remained strong in 2018, contributing to a total of 34,143 filings which translate to an annual growth of 4%. Filings from domestic applicants, however, continued to drop, totaling 39,278 filings in 2018, a decrease of 4% compared with the filings in 2017, chiefly due to the decline in utility model applications.
Among non-Taiwanese patent applicants, Japanese applicants continued to rank first in 2018 (14,169 filings), followed by applicants from the US (7,345 filings). Applicants from the PRC ranked third, approaching a new high of 3,506 filings, exceeding 3,000 for the first time. In terms of patents types, invention and design filings of non-Taiwanese applicants were mostly filed by Japanese applicants, while PRC applicants took the biggest share in utility model filings among non-Taiwan applicants.
Trademark
In 2018, thanks to foreign applicants’ sustained momentum, trademark filings (for registrations, same below) reached a new high in a continued growth for 18 years, with a total of 84,816 filings (counted by applications rather than classes) being received by the TIPO. Among them, 59,840 applications were filed by domestic applicants (a decrease of 2%), while 24,976 applications were filed by foreign entities, bringing an amazing annual increase of 11%.
Without counting filings from Taiwanese applicants, trademark filings in 2018 were mainly contributed by applicants from the following five countries/regions (with four of them from Asian markets): PRC (5,770 filings, an increase of 19%), Japan (4,728, an increase of 21%), the US (4,187, an increase of 14%), Hong Kong (1,649 filings) and South Korea (1,440 filings).