World Intellectual Property Indicators - 2012 Edition - SIPO

data descriptionWhere an office provides data that are not broken downby origin, WIPO estimates the resident and non-residentcounts using the historical shares at that office.National and international dataApplication and grant/registration data include both directfilings and filings via the international systems (where applicable).This publication employs the following terms:patent applications and grants; utility model applicationsand grants; trademark applications and application classcounts, and registrations and registration class counts;industrial design applications and application designcounts, and registrations and registration design counts;and plant variety applications and grants. In the case ofpatents and utility models, data include direct filings atnational patent offices and PCT national phase entries.For trademarks, data include filings at national andregional offices and designations received by relevantoffices via the Madrid system. Data for industrial designsinclude national and regional applications combinedwith designations received by relevant offices via theHague system.International comparabilityof indicatorsEvery effort has been made to compile IP statisticsbased on the same definitions and to facilitate internationalcomparability. As mentioned above, the data arecollected from offices using WIPO’s harmonized annualIP questionnaires. However, it must be kept in mind thatnational laws and regulations for filing IP applicationsor for issuing IP rights, as well as statistical reportingpractices, may differ across jurisdictions.Please note that due to the continual updating of dataand the revision of historical statistics, data provided inthis publication may differ from previously published figuresand from the data available on WIPO’s web pages.11