Trademark Statistics, filing and enforcement

In the year 2015 Chinese Trademark Office received 2,876,048 applications for trademark registration. 176,893, accounting to 6,1%of the total amount, were filed by foreigners. Currently there are more than 7million trademarks granted and around 10% of those are owned by foreigners. In order to understand the comparative value we have checked the number of the European, American and Japanese Trademark offices.

In 2015 the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) received 130.401 applications for trademark registration, and among these 108,515 were direct filing and 21,886 International Registration designating EUIPO. In addition 41.005 applications, accounting to 31% of the total amount, were filed by non-members states of European Union. Currently, there are 1,292.858 EUTM granted, and around 31,7% of those are owned by non-members states of European Union.

According to the data from the USPTO 530.270 trademarks were filed in 2015 in USA and the total amount of trademark registered and maintained in USA at 4Q 2016 is around 2,140,000. Among those 100,347 are registered via Madrid System, 275,000 are owned by foreigners and 1,704,107 are owned by American companies (around 79%). The Japan Patent Office received between April 2015 and March 2016, 155.274 applications for trademark registration. 16.563, accounting to 10,5% of the total amount, were filed by foreigners.

We note that work load in Beijing Trademark office is enormous. All trademark applications shall go through two examinations, the first intended to check the formal requirements (name spell, address correctness, completeness of the application, etc.) and the second is the substantive examination. Trademark Office verify if there are prior trademarks or lack of distinctiveness or any other absolute ground of refusal such. Keeping the workflow fast,  and decision consistent and substantially correct is a huge task. If we estimate that it could 10m time the formal examination and 20m the substantive examination for each application, every year Trademark Office shall invest more than 1 million hours of job. 

In addition we note that China has the lowest rate of foreign registrations (6,1%) comparing to the other main offices where foreign application account to 31% in Europe, 21% in USA and 10,5% in Japan.