Despite a few quarters of economic stability and overall growth in the IP industry, the first glimpse into the most recent public reports indicates a drop in global trademark filing volumes in 2022. The same trend remains in the EUIPO.
Nonetheless, it is interesting to see which trademark attorney firms are taking over substantial amount of trademark prosecution work and hence, leading the European trademark industry.
The current report is based on the trademark and patent representation data provided by IP Pilot and takes into account EM applications filed between 2019 and November 2022.
French IBE Avocat (led by Isabelle Bertaux) topped the ranking of the Top 10 EUIPO filers between 2019 and November 2022 with an impressive 9,137 filed trademarks. This is followed by Italian A.Bre.Mar (7,768), Lithuanian Metida (6,642), Spanish Arpe Patentes Y Marcas (6,405), Lawgical (5,615), Asternery (4,558), and Arcade & Asociados (3,177).
Most of the Top 10 trademark firms in the list mainly worked for Chinese clients. The only exception was Bugnion S.P.A. which filed a substantial amount of European marks for local Italian applicants.
In terms of country-wide trends (based on the largest 1,000 trademark attorney firms), German firms represented the highest share (approximately 23%) of European trademark filings in the last three years. Spanish representatives took second place with 21% despite dominating the Top 10 EUIPO filers.
Trademark attorney firms from Italy (13%) and France (9%) took the third and fourth positions in the country-wide ranking respectively.
As IP Pilot allows the possibility to track a firm’s volumes of patent and trademark representations in one single place, we can also detect the business priorities of the largest trademark attorney firms filing at EUIPO.
By combining the volumes of EP and EM filings, it is revealed that the top German, Italian and French trademark attorney firms have a somewhat balanced focus in their trademark and patent business arms. Spanish leaders within the Top 10 list, on the other hand, appears to be more focused on their trademark prosecution business.