Global Economy Decreasing Trademark Filings

The current economic recession isn’t just impacting patent and trademark filings in the United States, new data has surfaced that shows its slowing the rest of the world’s trademark filings as well.  According to Forbes.com, international filings with the World Intellectual Property Organization increased 5.3% last year.  But, there was a marked slow down in the second half of 2008.

The U.N. intellectual property’s director-general, Francis Gurry, said the following:

Trademarks in general concern new products or new enterprises and in conditions of economic recession you get less of both those two things.  We are experiencing the continuation of that slowdown in the course of this year.

Some more facts from the U.N. intellectual property agency reveal that German companies filed the most trademarks last year, increasing their applications by 2%.  French companies came in second, while U.S. firms came in third even though filings were down 1.5% from the previous year.