Novartis is the world leader in trademark filings
Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis filed the most international trademark applications with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2020.
The Basel-based firm filed a total of 233 Madrid applications (104 more than in 2019) moving it from third to first place based on 2020 figures. The pharma company was followed by Huawei Technologies of China (197), Shiseido Company of Japan (130), ADP Gauselmann of Germany (123) and L’Oréal of France (115).
Despite securing top spot in the company rankings, Switzerland only managed sixth place in the ranking of countries based on trademark applications with 3,518 filings. The US was the clear leader with over 10,000 applications, followed by Germany (7,334), China (7,075), France (3,716) and Britain (3,679).
Innovation nation?
In terms of innovation, the Alpine nation came eighth globally with 4,883 international patent applications. The leading countries were China (68,720), US (59,230) and Japan (50,520).
However, no Swiss company made it into the top 50. The leading companies were Huawei Technologies of China (5,464), followed by Samsung Electronics of Korea (3,093), Mitsubishi Electric Corp of Japan (2,810), LG Electronics of Korea (2,759) and Qualcomm of the U.S.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.