This year marks exactly 100 years since the Hague Agreement was instituted in 1925. On November 6, 2025, a centenary symposium was held in The Hague, the Netherlands, hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP), and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. At the symposium, participants discussed the benefits of the Hague System and its future prospects.
The Hague System is one of the special agreements under Article 19 of the Paris Convention (The current system operates under the 1999 Geneva Act.). Under the Hague System, applicants may file a single design application with the International Bureau and obtain an international registration that provides effects equivalent to filing separate applications in multiple contracting parties. Another advantage is that a single application may contain up to 100 designs, provided that all designs fall within the same class of the Locarno Classification. Currently, approximately 80 countries and regions are parties to the Hague Agreement, and Japan joined the system in 2015.
According to WIPO statistics (2023 results), the top three contracting parties in terms of the number of international applications filed under the Hague System are:
1. China – 1,813 2. Germany – 904 3. Republic of Korea – 825
Meanwhile, the top three countries in terms of the number of designs contained in international applications filed under the Hague System are:
1. Germany – 4,518 2. China – 3,758 3. United States of America – 2,674
For reference, Japan ranks eighth, with 466 applications filed and 1,001 designs contained.
Reference: Hague Yearly Review 2024
https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo-pub-930-2024-en-hague-yearly-review-2024.pdf
The Status Report published annually by the Japan Patent Office (JPO) also highlights the top 10 companies (both domestic and foreign) in terms of the number of designs registered through international design applications in 2024. For details, please refer to the materials below.
Reference: JPO Status Report 2025, Part I: Intellectual Property Trends in Numbers, Chapter 1: Intellectual Property Trends in Japan
https://www.jpo.go.jp/resources/report/statusreport/2025/document/index/0101.pdf