International design applications grew by 1.3% in 2019, according to the latest edition of the WIPO World Intellectual Property Indicators report, which was published this week.

The report estimated that 1.04 million industrial design applications containing 1.36 million designs were filed worldwide in 2019.

China’s IP office received applications containing 711,617 designs, or 52.3% of the world total.

It was followed by the EUIPO (113,319) and the IP offices of the Republic of Korea (69,360), the United States (49,848) and Turkey (46,202).

Among the top 20 offices, the Russian Federation (+22%), the Islamic Republic of Iran (+19.3%) and Australia (+10.3%) reported the greatest growth.

Offices located in Asia accounted for more than two-thirds (68.4%) of all designs in applications filed worldwide in 2019, followed by Europe (24.3%) and North America (4.2%). The combined share of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania was 3.1% in 2019.

Designs related to furnishings accounted for 9.4% of global filing activity, based on total number of designs, followed by those related to clothing (8.1%) and to packages and containers (7.3%).

The number of industrial design registrations in force worldwide grew by 7.3% to reach around 4.1 million. The largest number of registrations in force was in China (1.8 million), followed by the Republic of Korea (358,803), the United States (357,959) and Japan (261,669).