The Italian Patent and Trademark Office has released figures on how filings and grantings of intellectual property rights during the Covid-19 emergency compare with the same period of 2019: numbers show growth for patent and utility model filings and only a modest decrease for designs notwithstanding the lockdown, while trademark filings have fallen.

The Covid-19 emergency in Italy led to several weeks of lockdown of most economic activities as well as to the suspension of all the terms, provided for by Italian intellectual law one one hand, and by the Italian patent and trademark office on the other, falling from 23 February to 15 May 2020 (see here).

Official figures recently published by the Italian Patent and Trademark Office itself show, however, that intellectual property right filings between March and June 2020 were more or less aligned with those of the same period of 2019.

Patent and utility model filings actually saw a substantial increase: +9.5% for patents and +38.2% for utility models. European patent validations in Italy fell by 4.4%.

Trademark filings fell by 18%, owing essentially to a lower propensity of economic operators to undertake new activities, while applications for design registration decreased by 4.3%.

The granting of rights and processing of petitions followed a more or less similar trend, showing positive figures in the area of innovation with +2.9% for patents, +20.6% for utility models and +53.9% for validations of European patents.

Grantings went down by 38.5% for trademarks, a slump largely due to the suspension of terms that slowed down the pace of activities at the Italian Patent and Trademark Office. Grantings fell by just 0.4% for designs.