IP asset registration up 11% in 1st half

Application for registration of Intellectual Property (IP) assets filed at the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) totaled 22,952 in January to June this year.

This translates to an 11 percent climb from the 20,628 applications of trademarks, inventions, utility models, and industrial designs filed in the comparable period last year.

Applications in TMs in the first half reached 18,964, rising 11 percent year-on-year. Resident filers for TMs totaled 10,970, growing 6 percent. Non-resident filers stood at 3, 894, 2 percent up.

- Advertisement -spot_img

Patent filings grew 4 percent to 1,991. Filings from residents decreased by 40 percent to 148 while that of non-residents who directed their applications at the IPOPHL increased 6 percent to 186.

Filings in the utility model segment totaled 1,173 in the first semester of 2019, posting a 31 percent growth. About 97 percent of the UMs filed in the first semester of 2019 were from residents, which booked 1,133 filings or a 32 percent year-on-year hike.

Filings for industrial design totaled 824, a 14 percent rise year-on-year. Some 567 residents filed for ID protection, registering a 44 percent climb. Non-residents’ filing for ID registration stood at 257, a 22 percent decrease from a year ago.

Deposition of copyrights at IPOPHL jumped 53 percent to 990, reflecting a boost of creativity in the country during the period.

Copyrights are a bundle of exclusive rights extended to an owner of an original work in the literary, scientific, and artistic domains. Copyright laws grant authors, artists, and other creators automatic protection for their literary and artistic creations from the moment of creation.

IPOPHL Director-General Josephine R. Santiago attributed the increased filings to the concrete programs and efforts IPOPHL continues to effectively and aggressively implement: IP education and awareness campaigns; capacity-building of Innovation and Technology Support Offices which had actively been filing inventions and utility models and the active involvement of Intellectual Property Satellite Offices (IPSOs the expansion of the IPSO network with the launching of three more offices in 2018,

DG Santiago noted, however, that applications for any IP domain do not demonstrate trends in a certain period within a year. Thus, the IPOPHL looks forward to seeing the year-end figures to assess how it compares with last year’s overall growth. This way, the Office is able to evaluate in a broader approach how certain government strategies and policies affect the local society’s utilization of the IP system, the degree of which is one of the criteria at which innovation and economic progress are pegged.

Trademark (TM)

Applications in TMs in the first half reached 18,964, rising 11 percent year-on-year. Resident filers for TMs totaled 10,970, growing 6 percent. Non-resident filers stood at 3, 894, 2 percent up.

Meanwhile, filings under the Madrid System soared 42 percent to 4,100. The Madrid System is an international TM application system that allows for a single filing for registration in multiple countries that are members to the system.

On industries, most of the total filings were in agricultural products and services; pharmaceuticals, health, cosmetics; and scientific research, information and communication technology.

A TM is a word, a group of words, sign, symbol, logo or a combination thereof that identifies and differentiates the source of the goods or services of one entity from those of others. If you’re a business, distinguishing your goods or services from others gives you a competitive edge.

The Joint Examination Track Procedure for filing, which the IPOPHL started implementing on Jan. 21 this year, gave way for the Office to process more applications. As of June 30, 2019, filing to assignment to a TM examiner took only 15 days, a 38 percent reduction from 24 days as of December 2018.

Patent

Copyrights depositions are excluded from the tally of the total IP filings.

Author

Share post: