Robert Reading and Maja Popovic of Clarivate CompuMark have produced a fascinating report on Global Trade Mark Filing Trends for 2026. The data (and copyright) is theirs, and I hope they don’t mind me extracting two of the tables from their report, putting them side by side, to show where Australia is at in terms of our business sophistication, with trade marks as the canary.
You will see that all of the top 20 filers in China, are mainland Chinese companies, bar two (one being based in the Cayman Islands, for obvious reasons, and one solitary US company down the bottom of the list at place 19).
In contrast, of the top 20 filers in Australia, there are only three Australian companies on the list. Nine are from mainland China.
Our business landscape is still dominated by foreign owned industry.
The top filer in China filed over 1500 marks there, in one year.
Again, in stark contrast, the top filer in Australia filed a mere 84 marks in the year.
We are still not understanding trade marks and capitalising on the utility of IP assets as appreciating assets, supportive of business valuations for loans and exits, and the ability to use them as vehicles for transfer of money between entities (via licence fees).
I challenge all Australian businesses to take stock of their trade mark portfolio, and reach out if you see a gap. Let’s have Australian businesses assert dominance over the Australian trade mark landscape.
Otherwise, we face becoming like Canada (with only one of the top 20 filers in Canada in 2025 being a Canadian entity, and even then…that entity coming in right down the bottom of the list at position 19).
Where are we headed? Australian businesses, you get to decide.
