We often think that the celebration of the World Intellectual Property Day is something that does not concern Spain.

We often only make public the fact that we are at the bottom of the rankings as regards patent applications but, although patents have been viewed historically as a good indicator of innovation, it is also true that other figures of intellectual property can reflect this by including other types of innovations which are not purely technological but involve services and the way products are presented, etc.

This means that we can state that, as the fourteenth world economy as regards GDP, Spain, apart from being an economic power, also has the same influence in the field of Intellectual Property. When analyzing these figures from the point of view of applications presented abroad (i.e. looking at the country’s exports of products and value added services), and, taking into account the intricacies of figures for regions spanning various countries, Spain occupies (*):

• sixth place as regards trademarks applied for worldwide.
• ninth place as regards designs applied for worldwide.
• tenth place as regards plant varieties worldwide.

However, it is true that warning lights flash when we see that, when comparing these data with those published in 2012, Spain has dropped two places in the ranking for designs and has disappeared from the top 20 for patents.

(*) (Data published in November 2015 by the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization). The “Application count abroad (equivalent)” criteria take into account where they are resident when they apply for regional figures such as the Community Trademark which cover other countries apart than their own.