India witnesses a notable rise in WIPI Report; moves up to the 6th spot in global patent filings

The annual World Intellectual Property Indicators (WIPI) Report published by WIPO[1] reveals a positive growth pattern for India’s IP landscape in 2021. As per the Report, global patent filings were restored to pre-covid levels, with innovators around the world filing 3.4 million patent applications in the year 2021. India contributed to the global patent filings with 61,573 patent applications in 2021, as compared to 56,771 applications in the year 2020. This marks a 16.5% rise in patent grants in the country in 2021. Moreover, the percentage of pending patent applications saw a remarkable growth of 91.5% during the same period. These factors contributed to India’s entry to the sixth spot in the list of top-ranking IP offices across the globe. It is noteworthy that almost 43% of the Indian patent applications were local and filed by resident applicants, which is a reflection of India’s indigenous R&D maturation. Incidentally, 18.5% of total published applications in India were related to pharmaceuticals.

Apart from patents, the Indian trade mark landscape witnessed over 4,88,526 trademark applications being filed during 2021, which indicated a 6.7% increase compared to 2020. In India, the three countries contributing the largest shares of total non-resident trade mark filings were the United States of America (23.5%), China (9.6%) and Germany (9.3%). These three countries together account for 42.4% of total non-resident filing in India. Owing to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the health sector attracted the largest proportion of trademark applications filed in India.

The design applications also witnessed a remarkable rise in India, wherein designs contained in resident applications grew by 5.6%. This enabled India to enter the top three offices with a growth of (+67.6%) in design registrations.

As per WIPO Director General Daren Tang, “IP filing strength during the pandemic showed that people across the world continued to innovate and create despite the economic and social disruptions caused by the pandemic”. India’s tremendous rise in the global IP scenario is suggestive of an overall boom in the country’s innovation and entrepreneurial activity prompted by the pandemic.

[1] https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo-pub-941-2022-en-world-intellectual-property-indicators-2022.pdf