Trademark Filing Trends for French Applicants: Domestic vs. Abroad

Using the WIPO Statistical Database's origin-to-destination filing matrix for 2014 to 2024, this analysis looks at:

It's part of a wider look at this same question across a dozen major filing nationalities, covered in full here, if you'd like the broader comparison alongside the French-specific detail below.

In 2024, French-origin applicants filed 139,380 trademark applications worldwide. Of those, 91,691 (65.8%) were filed only with the French national office (INPI), and 47,689 (34.2%) were filed abroad.

Put another way: for roughly every three applications a French applicant files at home, about one and a half are filed abroad, a ratio of 0.52 international filings for every domestic one.

France's domestic share has climbed steadily over the decade, though not without a sharp interruption along the way.

Source: WIPO Statistical Database, applicant origin-to-destination office filing data, 2014 to 2024.

Domestic share rose from 60.7% in 2014 to 65.8% in 2024, but the path wasn't smooth. 2020 stands out sharply: domestic filing jumped to its highest point in the dataset while outbound filing dropped to its lowest, pushing domestic share to a one-year peak of 71.2%, plausibly a pandemic-era effect as cross-border filing activity slowed more than domestic activity did. The following years partially reversed that swing, outbound filing recovered into the low 50,000s, before settling into a pattern that looks close to, but still slightly more domestic than, where the decade started.

Looking at 2024, French outbound filings are led by one destination well ahead of the rest:

The EU trademark office alone accounts for roughly 18% of all French outbound filings, more than the next two destinations combined. The UK and the US follow at a similar, much smaller scale, and the remainder of the top ten spreads across a broad mix of major economies with no other single destination standing out.

France draws a comparatively small amount of foreign filing activity relative to its own domestic volume. Of the 97,701 total applications filed with the French office in 2024, only 6,010 (6.2%) came from applicants based outside France. The largest foreign filer nationalities were:

China leads foreign filing by a clear margin, roughly double the next largest source, the United States, though the absolute numbers here are modest compared to some other national offices. 

As with other EU member states, this figure likely understates real foreign interest in the French market: many foreign businesses seeking protection in France do so through the EU trademark at EUIPO rather than filing nationally, since a single EU-wide registration already covers France alongside every other member state.

A meaningful pool of outbound filing is only half the picture; the other half is how it's getting filed. Our earlier analysis of Madrid System adoption rates found that the share of total French filing activity arriving via Madrid fell over the same period, from 3.8% in 2014 to 2.5% in 2024, already one of the lowest Madrid adoption rates of any major filing nationality, and still falling. Direct filing isn't just the default in France, it's becoming even more dominant over time.

France is a market where domestic filing has grown its lead gradually, with a clear pandemic-era disruption along the way, foreign filing into the national office stays modest (understated by the EU filing route), and Madrid's role keeps shrinking rather than growing. For firms handling outbound work for French clients, the EU trademark office covers the largest single share of that work, and direct filing is already the strong, strengthening default. Trama's WIPO cost and risk calculator can help size up the Madrid versus direct filing decision for any specific France-outbound combination.

For how France compares to other major filing nationalities, and the aggregate trend across all of them, see the full WIPO trademark filing analysis.