A new WIPO report monitoring recent trends in intellectual property activity says that preliminary figures for 2008 indicate that growth rates in IP use were tending towards zero, or declining, due to the start of the global economic crisis.

In contrast, the previous year - the latest period for which full statistics are available – showed shows strong growth with 1.85 million patent applications (+3.7% increase over 2006), almost 3.3 million trade mark applications (+1.6%) and approximately 0.62 million industrial design applications (+15.3%) filed worldwide in 2007.