The number of classes specified in trade mark applications grew by 26.8% in 2017, marking the eighth consecutive year of growth, according to figures in WIPO’s latest World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) report.

The WIPI report, published on 3 December, found that an estimated 9.11 million trademark applications covering 12.39 million classes were filed worldwide in 2017. Announcing the findings, WIPO said:

The IP office of China had the highest volume of filing activity with a class count of around 5.7 million, followed by the U.S. (613,921), Japan (560,269), the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO; 371,508) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (358,353). Among the top 20 offices, the Islamic Republic of Iran (+87.9%) and China (+55.2%) reported high annual growth. At both of those offices, strong growth in resident filings drove the overall growth. Japan (+24.2%), the U.K. (+24.1%) and Canada (+19.5%) also saw considerable growth.

Offices located in Asia accounted for 66.6% of all trademark filing activity in 2017, up from 36.1% in 2007. Europe’s share declined from 38.9% in 2007 to 17.7% in 2017. North America accounted for 6.4% of the world total in 2017, while the combined share of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania was 9.2% in 2017 – five percentages points below their combined 2007 share.

Trademarks associated with advertising and business management accounted for 11% of global trademark filing activity in 2017, followed by clothing (7%), computers, software and instruments (6.6%) and education and entertainment (5.5%).

There were an estimated 43.2 million active trademark registrations worldwide in 2017 – up 9.7% on 2016, with 14.9 million in China alone, followed by 2.2 million in the U.S., 1.9 million in Japan and 1.6 million in India.

The WIPO also looks at trends in patents, plant varieties, geographical indications and industrial designs: find out more here.