by Jeremy Erwin , Ross Magee August-21-2023 in Commercial & Business, Intellectual Property
Last Friday, 18 August 2023, the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland (IPOI) published its Annual Report for the year 2022. The IPOI is the statutory body which administers and maintains the registers of Patents, Trade Marks, Designs, amongst other functions. The Report has some interesting statistics, particularly in relation to trade marks.
Trade marks
The IPOI received 2,019 trade mark applications in 2022, of which 1,675 proceeded to registration (83%). In addition to that, 1,123 international trade mark applications designating Ireland were received by the IPOI, of which 940 were registered (84%). The figures for national trade mark applications for 2022 show a decrease of approximately 24% compared to 2021. The 2022 applications are slightly down on the 2020 figure of 2,370 applications.
There were 1,266 Irish resident applications for EU trade marks for 2022, down from 1,667 in 2021. That figure is also slightly down on the 2020 figure of 1,331 applications.
Among the top classes of goods and services applied for in 2022, class 35 (advertising, business management etc.) accounted for the greatest proportion of trade mark applications. That was followed by class 41 (education, entertainment etc.) and class 9 (electrical apparatus and instruments etc.) In 2022, there were 50,619 national registered trade marks in force, which is broadly in line with the years 2020 and 2021. Some 2,380 trademarks were removed from the Register for non-payment of renewal fees and just 19 trade marks were surrendered.
The reason attributed by the IPOI for the decrease in trade mark applications in 2022 is the changing economic environment. It will be interesting to see whether that continues for the full year in 2023, when the report is released next year.
Patents
In relation to Patents, national patent applications filed in 2022 decreased approximately 10% from 2021, while European patents designating Ireland, and which were entered on the Irish patent register showed a slight increase of 2.5% on 2021. Of the European patent applications by Irish resident companies, medical technology, computer technology and pharmaceuticals are the leading areas.
The link to the 2022 IPOI Annual Report is here : The Intellectual Property Office of Ireland publishes 2022 Annual Report - IPOI
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About the Authors
Jeremy Erwin
Jeremy specialises in insolvency, commercial litigation and dispute resolution, acting for a variety of companies and financial institutions in contract law cases, enforcement and recovery actions and in high value complex Commercial Court proceedings. Jeremy also specialises in intellectual property matters, including advising on registration and protection of trade marks and related rights and on trade mark disputes.
Ross Magee
Ross is a Solicitor in the Commercial & Business team at Hayes solicitors. He practices predominantly in insolvency, commercial litigation and dispute resolution. He acts for a variety of corporates, financial institutions, private equity funds and private individuals in contentious matters that include, insolvency; enforcement and recovery; landlord and tenant; intellectual property, defamation and other general litigation claims.