According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), new trademark application filings dropped by 16% with some 35,195 applications for trademarks received in 2009, compared to 42,075 in 2008.
In Japan, trademark filings were up a modest 2.7 percent, despite patent filings there being significantly down. In Singapore, trademark filings are up 20% and in South Korea, they are up by a third. It seems that the Far East was less badly hit than Europe or the US by the recent recession.
Israel has not yet implemented the Madrid Protocol. I suspect it will do so in June. We’ll see.
