Australian IP report 2025
Product and service classes
Trade mark applications are assigned to good and service categories using the Nice Classification, an international system of 45 good and service classes.1
Applicants can nominate one or several classes for their trade marks. On average, applicants filed 1.76 classes per application in 2024, amounting to 151,013 total class filings in 2024.
Figure 3.4 shows the top 5 categories in which trade mark filings in Australia are concentrated. High-tech manufacturing industries are heavy trade mark filers, as are information-intensive services (e.g., education). Advertising covers a broad mix of different services, including retail, advertising, business management and advisory services.
Figure 3.4 Top 5 trade mark classes for volume of trade mark filings in 2024, and high-volume classes with the greatest relative growth and decline in 20242
Domestic applicants
Domestic applicants file their largest share of trade mark applications in service categories, such as advertising (11.1% of resident applications) and education, training and entertainment (9.1%). In medical and veterinary services, Australian residents file 3.5 times the number of trade marks than international applicants, reflecting the proximity of local businesses to the market.
Australian entities also file a significant share of their trade mark applications for technological and electrical apparatus – around 6.9% in 2024.
Economic studies show that trade mark registrations can play a significant role in businesses attracting investment. A study of European startups, for instance, found that applying for a trade mark increased startup valuation by venture capitalists by 22%.3
Given their role in entrepreneurship, trade mark use by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Australia has been growing rapidly. Between 2018 and 2024, the share of active SMEs in Australia who held a trade mark increased from 6.4% to 7.0%. That includes an increase in trade mark-holding SMEs from just under 176,000 in 2023 to over 188,000 in 2024.
IP Australia offers a free digital tool, TM Checker, to make it easier to apply for trade marks. The tool uses AI technologies to deliver customised information that guides you through the application process, all the way to completing an application. You can check whether your idea for a trade mark is similar to existing registered marks, avoiding costly mistakes and saving time.
For new business owners, it’s vital to check whether your trade marks are registrable when setting up your business and launching new products or services. To ensure broad access to our tool, we have partnered with other service providers for new businesses, such as domain registration websites, who link to our product. Through this partnership effort, we are working to reduce the number of touch points for business owners to launch and protect their brands.
International applicants
Trade marks are also important in the context of international trade. It is often by investing in a brand that businesses will signal their intent to broaden geographically into new markets. Investing in the brand can involve significant (and irreversible) investments, both within the firm and through alliances and acquisitions. As such, international trade mark filings are a valuable indicator of developments in trade.
In 2024, trade mark filings fell across several technology-intensive classes for the second consecutive year – by 5.0% in technological and electrical apparatus (to 14,021) and by 5.9% in scientific and technological services (to 10,228). This decline was underpinned by reduced filings from the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK), the lead origins for trade marks in these classes behind Australia.
In contrast, trade mark filings grew strongly for household or kitchen utensils and containers (+22.2% to 4,020) and furniture (+21.1% to 2,815), driven largely by international filings. Continued trade mark growth was also observed for personal items such as clothing, footwear, headgear (+7.7% to 8,311), non-medicated cosmetics and toiletry preparations (+10.7% to 5,226), and pharmaceutical and veterinary preparations (+8.3% to 6,314).
A driver of this growth is likely to be a recent boom in e-commerce from China. In 2024, 85% of the total growth in trade mark filings for household items came from China. The country’s filings in this class increased to 1.75 times their level in 2023, from 813 to 1,424. A related driver may be the desirability that businesses hold trade marks to maximise benefits of selling through online marketplaces such as Amazon and Temu.4 Trade marks are used in this context to sell inexpensive everyday items for which consumers may not have strong brand loyalty.
Other jurisdictions such as the United States have experienced rapid increases in trade mark filings from China over the last decade. Between 2017 and 2021, China’s share of US trade mark filings tripled from 10% to 29%. A study of 365 applications for trade marks filed for apparel at the USPTO in 2017 found that 44.4% involve a word “that is unpronounceable in English and that the applicant indicated has no meaning in any other language.”5
IP Australia undertakes daily scans of Australia’s trade mark register for marks comprised of random collection of letters. While such trade marks are unusual by traditional standards and do not conform to traditional perceptions of a brand, they have a high acceptance rate – many are found to be legally acceptable for registration under Australian trade mark law. Further, many appear linked to genuine use, including trade through online retail marketplaces. IP Australia is also aware of concerns around counterfeit and non-compliant e-commerce entering the Australian market. The agency continues efforts to educate consumers about deceptive or fraudulent trade mark use.
Total trade mark filings for transport services and for vehicles in Australia also grew strongly, up 5.7% and 9.9%, in 2024, driven by domestic and international filings. Notably, Chinese applications for vehicles increased by 79.4%. This accompanies significant growth in applications for transport across patents, trade marks and designs.
- For more information, see https://www.wipo.int/classifications/nice/en/.
- High volume classes are defined as classes in the top quartile for total number of applications received in 2023.
- Block, J. H., de Vries, G., Schumann, J. H., & Sandner, P. (2014). Trademarks and venture capital valuation. Journal of Business Venturing, 29(4): 525–542.
- Fromer, J. & McKenna, M. P. (2025), Amazon’s quiet overhaul of the trademark system. California Law Review (113), 24–36.
- Beebe, B. & Fromer, J. C. (2020), Fake Trademark Specimens: An Empirical Analysis, 120 Colum. L. Rev. F. (217), 218–20.