Following the recent practice as of the previous years, the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam (IPVN) has just released a list including the numbers of domestic patent (invention/utility solution (utility model)) and industrial design applications and granted cases of all the provinces and cities in Vietnam published in the IP Gazette in the first six months of 2025. While the fundamental of statistics is aimed to provide an overall view of the landscape of the State IP management, this also provides a glance at the status and the trends occurring in the first half of 2025 in comparison to the same periods of the previous years.
Patent applications and industrial design applications
The numbers of patent and design applications published in the first six months of the years 2021 to 2025 are illustrated in the chart below.
Overall, it can be pointed out that the number of published design applications in the first six months is relatively stable throughout the five years, while the figure for patent applications has witnessed an increase since 2023.
In particular, the published design applications in the first six months of each year had witnessed an increase since 2021 until 2024, when it peaked at 934 applications. In the subsequent year, the number of applications declined from 934 in 2024 to 835 in 2025, which is equal to a 10.6% decrease, yet the figure remained considerably higher than in the other years, which is 13.14% higher compared with 2021.
Regarding the figures for the patent applications, it can generally be pointed out that the number hit its lowest in 2023 at 491 applications, ever since 2021 when it started at 671. Since then, the number of published applications rose significantly to 789 in 2024 and to 940 in 2025, which is the equivalent of nearly doubling the number of 2023. Additionally, it is also noteworthy that 2025 is the first instance where the number of published patent applications was higher than that of design applications in the given period.
In the grand scheme, while there are a few dips and fluctuations over the years, the numbers of published applications in both domains of patent and design share a common trend of increasing in the past five years. The above outcomes partly result from the awareness campaigns and outreach efforts, such as raising awareness about IP protection, training in information search and writing patent specification skills for research institutes, universities, businesses, and researchers that the IPVN has recently actively promoted.
Granted patent cases and industrial design cases
The numbers of granted patent and design cases during the years 2021 to 2025 are demonstrated in the chart below.
In general, both the numbers of granted patent and industrial design cases in the first half of each year in the period of 2021 to 2025 shared a relatively common trend throughout the period, where the numbers fluctuated considerably, especially from 2023 to 2025.
For patent cases, the 63% decrease from 397 to 147 between 2023 and 2024 is certainly concerning. However, in 2025, the IPVN made significant efforts to reduce the backlog, leading to an increase in the number of granted cases. As a result, the figure rebounded from the previous decline and rapidly reached 412 cases – the highest in the five years and nearly three times higher than the number recorded in the same period of 2024. Similarly, for granted designs, because of the efforts, the number of granted cases reached its highest level in 2025, with 686 cases.
It is known that the IPVN will maintain this high processing speed in the coming years. This is good news not only for domestic applicants but also for foreign applicants. For general statistics, please see our article.
By Dang Cong Thanh
