Patent and Trademark Filings Hit Record High in First Half of Year, Led by Individuals and First-Time Applicants

[Financial News] Domestic patent and trademark filings reached record highs in the first half of this year. Individuals and first-time applicants expanded the market base as advanced technology industries, including semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI), gained momentum.
 The Ministry of Intellectual Property said on the 17th that its analysis of “Industrial Property Filing Trends in the First Half of 2026” showed domestic patent filings reached 141,259 and trademark filings totaled 180,787, both record highs. The figures represented year-on-year increases of 29.2% and 18.6%, respectively.
 The industry saw a marked shift toward AI- and data-driven sectors. Filings in “computer programming, systems integration and management services,” the leading patent category, totaled 20,503 and rose sharply from 10.5% of all filings in the first half of last year to 16.0% this year. In trademarks, filings in “computer and scientific technology services” (Class 42) surged 64.2% year on year to 9,635, showing that advanced technology fields are reshaping the filing landscape.
 Individuals and first-time applicants were the main drivers of the surge. Individual patent filings totaled 33,819 in the first half, up 134.0% from the same period last year. Their share of all patent filings also nearly doubled, rising from 13.2% to 23.9%. In particular, the share of applications filed directly without an agent soared from 28.8% in the first half of 2023 to 66.7% in the first half of this year. The increase is believed to have been driven by the spread of generative AI tools, which lowered the barriers to drafting and researching patent specifications.
 Patent filings by first-time applicants—those submitting an application for the first time in their lives—also jumped 74.2% to 25,726, far outpacing the overall growth rate. In addition, overseas patent filings by Korean applicants with the five IP offices (IP5) totaled 165,567, up 30.1% from the previous year. The figures show that Korean companies are expanding their presence across major overseas markets, including the United States (10.4%), Europe (14.9%), Japan (14.8%) and China (1.8%).
 Jung Jae-hwan, Director of the Intellectual Property Information Bureau at the Ministry of Intellectual Property, said, “The base of applicants is expanding across the board, led by individuals and first-time applicants.” He added, “We will closely monitor filing trends and make every effort to manage examination quality so that quantitative growth leads to the acquisition of high-quality intellectual property rights.”
 Meanwhile, the upward trend in patent filings is common across major countries. Intellectual property offices around the world, including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), have seen the share of filings by individuals and startups grow in recent years as the use of generative AI tools to draft specification documents has increased.
 The report “Industrial Property Filing Trends in the First Half of 2026 and Key Characteristics” can be downloaded by anyone from the Korea Institute of Intellectual Property website.

[email protected] Kim Won-jun Reporter