Advance Australia IP Fair? Australian IP Report 2025 shows increase in filings for designs, trade marks, plant rights, but slight dip in patents

IP Australia, the Australian Government agency which administers intellectual property law in Australia, including granting patents, trade marks and design rights, has just published its annual review of IP filings and related data for the previous year.

The Australian IP Report 2025 (downloadable from the IP Australia site here) is the 13th to be published, and, in addition to the raw data on filings in 2024, includes a wealth of stats culled from Australian and international research into the value of IP for companies.

Highlights from the report:

• 2024 saw a record year for new design filings, which rose by 9% to 9,583.

• Trade mark applications rose by 3% to 85,945. This was partly driven by a 22% jump in trade mark filings for household items.

• Standard patent applications fell by 3%, with 30,478 filed. However, some technology fields, including biotechnology, continue to show strong growth.

• Applications for plant breeder’s rights (PBR) increased by 48% in non-cereal field crops, the highest recorded level for this plant variety.

• IP Australia says that more than half of new trade mark applications - a leading indicator of economic growth - were made by Australian residents. The number of Australian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that hold a trade mark also increased by 12,000 to over 188,000 in 2024.

• Australia is also seeing substantial growth in IP applications from China, with the country overtaking the US in trade mark filings. In 2024, trade mark applications originating from China nearly doubled and new design filings rose by 66%.

• As competition in Australia’s electric vehicle market develops, EV patent applications from China rose 75% year-on-year over the past 3 years. In the transport category, new design filings from all countries increased by 9%, while standard patent filings grew by 13%.

At a glance: IP rights statistics, 2024

Source: Australian Government, IP Australia

Some other data points cited in the report (with sources):

• After filing for an IP right, Australian SMEs are 16% more likely to experience high employment growth than their peers without recent filings (Zhang, 2021).

• International studies estimate that patents and trade marks increase investors’ estimates of a startup’s value by around 20% (especially in the early development stage and early financing rounds) (Hsu & Ziedonis, 2013).

• For businesses with a valuable invention, their first patent allowance causes a 12% increase in revenue per worker and 22% increase in employment (Kline et al., 2019).

• After filing for a trade mark, Australian businesses on average employ 7% more people and spend 5% more on R&D, compared to the firm and its peers with no trade marks (Falk, 2021).

• In design right-intensive industries, holding registered or certified design rights is linked to higher productivity, R&D spend and exports (Kollmann et al., 2022).

• In Australian startups, their first patent grant results in significant wage premia and spurs workforce upgrading to allow for commercialisation (Dobson-Keeffe & Falk, 2025).

• Patent grants are a significant forward indicator of the likelihood that Australian businesses will form collaborations such as joint R&D and joint commercialisation arrangements (Menezes et al., 2024; Nguyen & Falk, 2024).

• Applicants that use IP Australia’s ‘fast track’ options to expedite examination are more likely to renew, commercialise and build on their patents after grant (Higham et al., 2025).

• For small innovators that engage with IP early in their strategic development, the ability to influence examination timing results in more innovations, more commercialised products and enhanced lifetime value to their IP (Higham et al., 2025).

• When businesses launch new products, each additional trade mark is linked to an 8% revenue increase per employee above the revenue generated by the launch (Nathan & Russo, 2022)