Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) director-general Rowel Barba expects that 2023 will be a historic year for registration of patent protection in the country.
This, as IPOPHL observed a continuous growth in innovation-related intellectual property (IP) filings, including patent and industrial design (ID), from January to June this year.
“Patent activities could be positioned to reach a new record-high while UM (utility model) and ID applications move toward an impressive rebound. From this, we could sense that 2023 is skewing towards a year of innovation,” Barba said in a statement Thursday, Aug. 24.
IPOPHL reported that there were 2,134 patent registrations in the first half of the year, 9-percent higher than the 1,958 filings in the same period in 2022.
Of the patent filings this year, non-resident registrations accounted for 90 percent (1,916) while Philippine-based patents shared 10 percent (218).
Most of the patent applications came from the sector of pharmaceuticals (24 percent), organic fine chemistry (11 percent), and digital communications (8 percent).
ID applications at IPOPHL rose 17.6 percent to 635 in the first half of 2023, from 540 filings during the same period last year.
“Activities were driven by residents with a 337 or 53.1 percent share in filings. Non-resident ID filings took up 298 or 46.9 percent,” IPOPHL added.
Majority of ID filings came from hoisting, furnishing and packages and containers for transport or handling of goods.
IPOPHL said registration for UMs rebounded in the first six months of the year. UM filings grew by 27.7 percent to 835 in January to June 2023 from 654 in the same period in 2022.
A total of 802 applications were from residents and the remaining 33 were from non-residents.
“Top UMs filed were in fields of food chemistry (55.6 percent), basic material chemistry (8.9 percent), and pharmaceuticals (5.6 percent),” the agency added.
Meanwhile, filing for copyright climbed 64.5 percent to 2,833 in the first half of 2023 from 1,722 in the same period last year.
Barba said copyright registration from January to June is already 70 percent of IPOPHL’s target filing for this segment at 4,000 for the full year of 2023.
“Copyright registrations for the period were mainly driven by books, pamphlets, articles, e-books, audio books, comics, novels and other writings (60.4 percent); followed by computer programs, software, games and apps (10.6 percent); and musical compositions (8.8 percent),” IPOPHL added.
On the other hand, trademark filings from January to June this year declined by 8 percent to 18,599 from 20,342 applications in the same period last year.
Barba said trademark application could rebound in the second semester.
“Historically, trademark filing activities have been more active in the second semester so we continue to monitor the trend to see if a reversal is still possible,” he said. — Kris Crismundo (PNA)
