Brussels, 25/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 25 April ahead of World Intellectual Property Day, celebrated every 26 April, Eurostat noted that almost 90 000 EU trade mark applications were received from member states in 2015, a number about 4 times higher that of the mid-1990s.
Applications made in 2015 from EU Member States accounted for nearly 70% of all applications made at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) that year (the new agency that took over from the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (EU) OHIM) (see EUROPE 11512), which totalled 130 385 applications. Germany was in the lead in the number of TM applications from member states (20 447 applications, or 23% of EU total) was the first Member State in terms of applications for TM protection in 2015, followed by the United Kingdom (12 527, or 14%), Italy (9 941, or 11%), Spain (9 406, or 11%), France (7 907, or 9%), the Netherlands (4 534, or 5%) and Poland (3 665, or 4%).
In relative terms, the highest number of TM applications per million inhabitants was recorded in 2015 by Luxembourg (2 190), followed by Malta (960), Cyprus (652), Austria (345) and Denmark (309). At the opposite end of the scale, Croatia (32), Romania (33), Hungary (57), Slovakia (67) and Greece (72). In the EU, there were on average 176 applications for trademark protection per million inhabitants made to the EUIPO in 2015.
The highest number of TM applications made to the EUIPO from outside the EU came by far from the United States (16 881), ahead of China (4 153), Switzerland (3 997), Japan (2 593) and South Korea (2 038).
The EU trademark has been in force since 23 March last and is expected in the long term to help cut registration costs by 37% (see EUROPE 11519). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)