Taiwan Intellectual Property Office has released the statistics of patent and trademark applications for the year of 2017. The total number of patent filings is 73,791, and has increased 1.86% since 2016, mainly due to the growth of invention patent filings, while the number of utility model and design patent filings decreased. The total number of trademark filings is 83,802, an increase of 5.67% since 2016, and the growth remains steady for recent years. We have summarized the relevant data of patent and trademark filings in the following tables.
Table 1：Number of filings according to patent types from 2013 to 2017
| Year | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Invention | 49,218 | 46,379 | 44,415 | 43,836 | 46,122 |
| Utility Model | 25,025 | 23,488 | 21,404 | 20,161 | 19,549 |
| Design | 8,968 | 8,148 | 7,808 | 8,445 | 8,120 |
| Total | 83,211 | 78,015 | 73,627 | 72,442 | 73,791 |
Table 2：Comparison of number of filings between domestic and foreign applicants
| Year | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applicant | Domestic | Foreign | Domestic | Foreign | Domestic | Foreign |
| Invention | 17,262 | 27,153 | 16,866 | 26,970 | 18,199 | 27,923 |
| Utility Model | 20,132 | 1,272 | 18,998 | 1,163 | 18,343 | 1,206 |
| Design | 4,450 | 3,358 | 4,579 | 3,866 | 4,293 | 3,827 |
| Total | 41,844 | 31,783 | 40,443 | 31,999 | 40,835 | 32,956 |
| Percentage | 56.84% | 43.16% | 55.83% | 44.17% | 55.33% | 44.67% |
According to Tables 1 and 2 for patent filings in 2017, 39.45% of invention patent applications were filed by the domestic applicants, and 60.55% were filed by foreign applicants. 93.83% of utility model patent applications were filed by domestic applicants, and only 6.17% were filed by foreign applicants. 52.86% of design patent applications were filed by domestic applicants and 47.14% were filed by the foreign applicants. For the overall patent filings in 2017, the number of invention applications increased by 5.2%（with an increase of 7.9% for domestic applicants and 3.5% for foreign applicants）, the utility model filings fell 3%（a decrease of 3% for domestic applicants, with an increase of 4% for foreign applicants）, and the design filings fell 4%（the domestic applicants and foreign applicants both decreased by 6% and 1%, respectively）.
Table 3：Patent filings by five major foreign counterparts
| Year | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patent Type | Invention | Utility Model | Design | Invention | Utility Model | Design | Invention | Utility Model | Design |
| Japan | 12,284 | 121 | 1,090 | 12,006 | 85 | 1,258 | 12,497 | 92 | 1,261 |
| United States | 7,184 | 173 | 715 | 7,081 | 222 | 669 | 6,408 | 201 | 703 |
| China | 1,332 | 523 | 164 | 1,484 | 551 | 167 | 1,888 | 519 | 267 |
| Korea | 1,614 | 25 | 153 | 1,719 | 20 | 161 | 1,864 | 23 | 152 |
| Germany | 1,232 | 24 | 285 | 1,300 | 18 | 333 | 1,152 | 23 | 286 |
Table 3 shows the filing numbers of the major foreign counterparts who filed Taiwan patent applications. In 2017, invention patent filings increased for applicants from Japan, China and Korea, but it remains a decrease for three-consecutive years from the applicants of United States. This decrease is despite its 5.08% growth in design patent filings, though far below the growth of 59.88% by the applicants from China. For total filings in 2017, there were 13,850 applications filed by the applicants from Japan, an increase of 3.75% as compared with 2016’s filing numbers. There was a total of 7,312 applications from the applicants of United States, a decrease of 8.27%, or 2,674 filing applications compared to 2016. From China, there was an increase of 21.43% applications. From Korea, there was an increase of 6.84%, or 2030 applications. From Germany, there were 1,461 applications in total, a decrease of 11.5%.
Table 4：Trademark filings from 2013 to 2017
| Year | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Domestic Applicant （Percentage） | 55,338 （-74.74%） | 56,217 （-74.03%） | 57,356 （-73.05%） | 57,548 （-72.56%） | 61,215 （-74.05%） |
| Foreign Applicant （percentage） | 18,693 （-25.26%） | 19,716 （-25.97%） | 21,167 （-26.95%） | 21,752 （-27.44%） | 22,587 （-26.95%） |
| Total | 74,031 | 75,933 | 78,523 | 79,300 | 83,802 |
Table 5：Trademark filings by five major foreign counterparts
| Year | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 3,919 | 4,281 | 4,830 |
| Japan | 3,484 | 3,669 | 3,892 |
| United States | 3,835 | 3,735 | 3,684 |
| Hong Kong | 1,358 | 1,541 | 1,579 |
| Korea | 1,293 | 1,447 | 1,521 |
As shown in Table 4, the trademark filings grew continuously for the past five years, and the number of filings broke through 80 thousand in 2017. Table 5 shows the trademark filings by foreign counterparts for the past three years, in which only the filings by applicants from United States had a decrease. Among those filings by applicants from China, Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, applications grew 12.82%, 6.07%, 2.46% and 5.11%, respectively. Furthermore, the filings from applicants of China have experienced double-digit percent growth and ranks at the top for three consecutive years.
