Global Intellectual Property Filings Also in Slump... South Korea Maintains Its Reputation

Korean Patent Applications Down 11.3%
Individuals Experience Larger Decline Than Large Corporations
Amid Global Economic Uncertainty
Relatively Lower Decrease Rate Observed

Due to the global economic slowdown and uncertainties in major economies, worldwide intellectual property (IP) applications are also experiencing a downturn. Although South Korea was not immune to this trend, it maintained its reputation as a strong IP nation with a relatively low decline rate.

According to the Korea Intellectual Property Office and the Patent Statistics Center of the Korea Intellectual Property Research Institute (Patent Trends in 2023 Statistics) on the 8th, the total number of global IP applications in 2022 was approximately 20.48 million, a decrease of 11.3% compared to the previous year.

2022 Global Intellectual Property Application and Registration Status Data. The trend line is based on the most recent 10 years (2012-2022). Provided by the Korea Intellectual Property Research Institute.

In particular, trademark applications in 2022 recorded a -14.5% decline compared to the previous year, widening the contraction. Conversely, patent applications were the only category within the entire IP sector to increase, rising by 1.7% (3.9% based on registrations).

South Korea was also not exempt from the global downturn in IP applications. In 2022, domestic IP applications totaled approximately 556,000, marking a 6.1% decrease from the previous year. In terms of application numbers, this trend was consistent with the global pattern. However, when comparing the decline rates of domestic and global IP applications, South Korea showed a relatively better performance with a 5.2 percentage point smaller decrease, allowing for a relatively favorable evaluation.

This difference was similar in the trademark sector. In 2022, domestic trademark applications decreased by 9.4%, which was 5.1 percentage points less than the global trademark application decline rate of 14.5%. Trademarks are considered the sector with the highest proportion within the entire IP field, thus having a significant impact on the overall IP growth rate.

For the same reason, it is noteworthy that the proportion of domestic individual applicants in the trademark sector increased from 42.9% in 2012 to 48.5% in 2022 in the patent trend analysis.

Conversely, as of 2022, the growth rate of patent applications by individual applicants recorded a -13.9% decline compared to the previous year, which was a larger drop than that of large corporations (-9.1%). This suggests that recent domestic and international economic uncertainties have had a greater impact on individuals than on large corporations.

Graph of the number of patent applications by city and province and the year-on-year growth rate. Provided by the Korea Intellectual Property Research Institute

In terms of regional patent application status, the Seoul and Gyeonggi areas in the metropolitan region accounted for 64.8% of the total. Compared to the previous year, most cities and provinces nationwide, excluding major metropolitan cities in the metropolitan area, showed a contraction ranging from -1.9% to -8.8%.

The total number of domestic corporations that filed IP applications was 45,478, with an average of 6.1 IP applications per corporation, an increase of 0.2 applications compared to the previous year. In the distribution of applicant industries, manufacturing (C) had the highest share of applications at 46.3%, while the average number of applications per applicant was highest in scientific services (M) at 9.0 applications.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.