Intellectual property filings rise as economy recovers

Intellectual property filings increased by almost 12 percent last year as more businesses and artists pushed for their rights over their creation, after new applications for all types of patents dropped in 2020 for the first time in more than two decades.

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) said in a statement on Tuesday that it had a total of 46,496 filings last year, an 11.6 percent growth from 2020. Most of these are trademark filings, which are used to distinguish certain goods or services from the rest of the market.

This marked a welcome recovery for the agency, which saw filings across all types of intellectual property fall in 2020 due to uncertainty in the face of the COVID-19 virus, marking the first time a decline like this happened since IPOPHL was established in 1998.

Rowel Barba, director general of IPOPHL, attributed the rebound to the agency’s “aggressive intellectual property promotion campaigns to reach more inventors, artists and entrepreneurs.”

“Our accomplishment in re-stimulating demand for intellectual property creation and protection has motivated us stronger to sustain our momentum in rebuilding the economy with intellectual property,” he said

Applications for trademark grew by 12 percent to 39,616, IPOPHL said. This is also faster than its performance in 2019, which grew 10 percent then.

The trademark applications last year were in pharmaceuticals, health and cosmetics (11,360); followed by agricultural products and services (10,977); then by scientific research, information and communication technology (8,946); management, communications, real estate and financial services (7,624); and textiles, clothing and accessories (5,843).

Meanwhile, patent filings expanded by 10 percent to 4,031. A patent is a legal right to exclusively exploit an invention for the life of which lasts for 20 years. Most of these were pharmaceutical patents (with 3,170 filings), followed by organic fine chemistry (1,562); biotechnology, (994); basic materials chemistry, (614); and food chemistry, (443).

Utility model filings— which offer protection like patents, except they are easier to obtain and last only seven years— reached 1,588 last year, marking a 20-percent year-on-year growth, IPOPHL said. This was faster the 4-percent prepandemic growth in 2019. INQ