We are halfway through the year 2022. Covid-19 is not yet eradicated and the armed conflict in Ukraine promises to shake economies globally. How are applicants from China facing this scenario? Will there be a slowdown in the expansion of their trademarks?
Through this study, we will verify the main trends in registration since the beginning of the year in the European Union region (EU trademark applications and national trademark applications) by Chinese applicants.
Total numbers of trademarks
From January to the 5th of September, around 18 thousand trademarks were requested. The same period in the previous year registered a total of 29,835 trademarks. Since there may be a deviation in the data analyzed (the trademarks requested this year in the first week of September may not reflect the totality) we still see a huge shortage compared to the same period of the previous year. The biggest drop was due to the applications in the European Union, since national requests registered similar values.
Favorite Jurisdictions
The preferred jurisdiction for applicants from China is undoubtedly the European Union system, with nearly 14,000 applications since the beginning of the year.
Interestingly, there are more German applications, directly, than applications that designate some jurisdiction of the European Union through the Madrid Protocol.
Top 10
Applicants
Due to the number of Chinese companies, it would be expected that there might not be a preponderance of any company regarding the filing of trademarks applications in the EU region since the beginning of the year. However, despite not being relevant in the total sample, Huawei is highlighted in this group with at least 101 trademarks applications compared to the 56 trademarks applications of Beijing New Building Material. If we compare with the competitor XIAOMI, we can see that the latter has only requested 4 trademarks since the beginning of the year in this region.
Top 10
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. - 101 trademarks
Beijing New Building Material - 56 trademarks
CHONGQING WEIBO COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. - 42 trademarks
Honor Device Co., Ltd.- 39 trademarks
ZHU, Liping - 34 trademarks
Dongguan XiangLong International Trading Co., Ltd. - 28 trademarks
VIVO MOBILE COMMUNICATION CO., LTD. - 28 trademarks
Shenzhen Yitianze Technology Co., Ltd. - 25 trademarks
Imiracle (ShenZhen) Technology Co., Ltd. - 22 trademarks
Nio Co., Ltd. - 22 trademarks
Despite the total decrease in trademarks in the same period of the previous year, Huawei filed 28 more trademarks than last year.
Conclusion
So far, we have been able to verify that there has been a sharp decrease in the number of trademark applications in the European Union region by Chinese applicants, perhaps due to the armed conflict in Ukraine that has fractured the global economy. However, trademarks classifications continued the trend, demonstrating, once again, the prevalence of the technology sector of the Chinese economy.
It remains to be seen, for the future, what will be the economic outcome of this period in history and to be verified how Chinese industry will be able to deal with the instability of the global economy.
This article was originally published in IPR Daily.
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