MANILA – The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) reported that the registration of intellectual property (IP) in 2022 increased by 3.7 percent to 48,259 filings from 46,558 applications in 2021.
In a statement, IPOPHL said the IP filings last year is a record high for the agency, considering the economy is still recovering from the pandemic.
IP registration in 2022 is also higher by 2 percent during pre-pandemic, with 47,328 filings in 2019.
Patents, trademarks, utility models, and industrial designs can be registered for IP protection.
“The strong uptake in 2022 IP filings shows how aggressive businesses are in seizing opportunities in the more upbeat economy and the digitalization of business interactions as intensified by the pandemic,” IPOPHL Director General Rowel Barba said.
In 2022, the majority of filings were for trademark applications accounting for 41,235 of the total filings, up by 4 percent from the previous year. Trademark filings reflect an increase in the launch of new brands.
Of the total trademark applications, 61 percent of the filings were from residents and 39 percent were from non-residents.
The majority of trademark filings, comprising 18.4 percent of the total, were related to pharmaceuticals, health and cosmetic products.
This was followed by agricultural products and services, which made up 16.6 percent of the filings, and scientific research, information and communication technology, which made up 14.9 percent of the filings.
On the other hand, patent applications increased by 9.3 percent to 4,403. Out of these applications, 89 percent, or 3,918 were filed by non-residents while 11 percent, or 485 were filed by residents.
Bulk of the patent applications were pharmaceuticals, comprising 28.9 percent of the total. Organic fine chemistry accounted for 12.1 percent of the applications, followed by digital communications at 8.3 percent.
Meanwhile, utility model (UM) and industrial design (ID) fillings both slightly declined year on year. UM filings went down to 1,386 from 1,615 while ID registration slipped to 1,235 from 1,265.
IPOPHL also reported copyright registrations, which grew by 73 percent to 3,706 in 2022 from 2,141 in 2021.
Top copyright registrations were from books, pamphlets, articles, e-books, audio books, comics, novels, and other writings (36 percent); followed by literary, scholarly, scientific, and artistic works (19.7 percent); and drawings, paintings, architectural works, sculpture, engraving, prints, lithography or other works of art, models or designs for works of art (8.6 percent).
“More Filipinos are beginning to see the competitive value of having a degree of control over their most prized assets: the products of their minds, their IPs. More businesses and entrepreneurs are integrating IP into their strategies for success not despite the pandemic and other economic and environmental challenges in our midst but because of them,” Barba said. (PNA)
