There were an estimated 1.1 million industrial design applications, containing 1.4 million designs, filed worldwide in 2020, according to the recently published WIPO World Intellectual Property Indicators Report. This represents a 2% year-on-year increase.

China’s IP office received applications containing 770,362 designs in 2020 (55.5% of the world total). It was followed by the EUIPO (113,196) and KIPO (70,821), USPTO (50,743) and Turkey (47,653).

Regional trends

Among the top 10 offices, the UK (+9.5%) and China (+8.3%) recorded strong growth in design filing activity in 2020.

Offices located in Asia accounted for 70.9% of all designs in applications filed worldwide in 2020, up from 60.8% in 2010.

Europe’s share declined from 31.5% in 2010 to 22.1% in 2020. The combined share of the rest of the world was 7%.

The total number of industrial design registrations in force worldwide grew by 11% in 2020 to reach around 4.8 million.

The largest number of registrations in force was in China (2.2 million), followed by the United States (371,870), the Republic of Korea (369,526), Japan (263,307) and the EUIPO (251,692).

Types of product

Designs related to furniture and household goods (18.4%) accounted for the largest proportion of global filing activity in 2020; followed by textiles and accessories (14.1%); tools and machines (11.6%); electricity and lighting (9.8%) and construction (8.5%).

The image shows the Report cover. Read more about the Report on WIPO’s website here.