The number of intellectual property (IP) applications in the Philippines decreased by more than 5% in the first half of the year as trademark registrations declined due to the economic slowdown.
Data from the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) revealed that IP filings, including patents, utility models, industrial designs, and trademarks, fell to 22,203 from 23,494 in the same period last year.
Patent registrations increased by 9% to 2,134, with nonresident applications accounting for 90% of the total. The majority of these applications were in pharmaceutics (24.47%), organic fine chemistry (10.58%), and digital communications (7.89%).
Filings for utility models, which offer temporary patent-like protection, rebounded and increased by 27.7% to 835 applications. This increase was mainly driven by resident filers, who accounted for 96% of the total.
Industrial design submissions, which protect the unique appearance of a product, also saw a rise of 17.6% to 635 applications. Resident filers accounted for 53.1% of these registrations.
However, trademark filings experienced the largest decline, dropping by 8% to 18,599 applications compared to the same period last year.
Copyright registrations
In contrast, copyright registrations totaled 2,833 during the first half of the year, a 64.5% increase from the previous year. The majority of these registrations were for books, articles, e-books, and other writings (60.4%), followed by computer programs and software (10.6%), and musical compositions (8.8%).
Despite the decline in trademark filings, IPOPHL Director General Rowel Barba expressed optimism due to the increase in innovation-focused IP types. He also expects a potential rebound in trademark registrations for the remainder of the year.
“Patent activities could reach a new record-high while utility models and industrial design applications show impressive rebounds. This suggests that 2023 is trending towards a year of innovation,” Barba stated.
Barba also noted that trademark filing activities tend to be more active in the second semester and will continue to monitor the trend for possible reversals.
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