Staggering rise of US trademark applications from Chinese companies revealed

New research from CompuMark reveals that the number of Chinese trademark applications to foreign registers has doubled over the past two years, with Huawei Technologies leading the charge. As a result, the report predicts that China could overtake the United States as the world’s leading source of foreign trademark applications by 2020.

The report, “Chinese Brands Go Global”, is based on analysis of 62.6 million active trademarks across 186 trademark registers in over 200 countries. In terms of headline findings, it reveals the following:

• In the past two years, the number of Chinese trademark applications to foreign registers has doubled.
• Chinese applicants filed nearly 120,000 foreign trademark applications in 2017.
• The number of US trademark applications made by Chinese brands has increased by 800% since 2014 (more than 50,000 applications were filed in the United States in 2017).
• Europe, in particular the EUIPO register, has moved into second position in terms of where Chinese applicants file for marks.
• The growth in trademark applications from China in the United Kingdom increased 122% in 2017.
• Guangdong province (Shenzhen and Guangzhou) dominates in terms of foreign applications by mainland Chinese entities (nearly half of all foreign trademark applications in 2016 were filed by applicants using an address in Guangdong province).