Crypto-related US trademark filings nosedive in 2023

Although 2022 was an exceptionally successful year in terms of trademark applications related to the cryptocurrency industry in the United States, 2023 has got off to a lot slower start, as the numbers are about two-thirds lower than during the same period in the previous year.

In particular, the crypto-related trademark applications in the US in the first quarter of 2023 amounted to 559, which is a 66.1% decrease from 1,649 recorded in the first quarter of 2022, according to the data shared by the trademark and patent attorney Michael Kondoudis of The Law Office of Michael E. Kondoudis on April 5.

Upon further crunching the numbers from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), January 2023 saw 196 new crypto trademark applications, February only 160, while March witnessed a slight improvement in these trademark filings from the previous two months, counting 203 applications, as the chart indicates.

Notably, 2022 was a record-breaking year in this context, recording a total of 5,383 crypto-related trademark filings in the US, in comparison to 3,570 in 2021 and only 1,137 in 2020, as the cryptocurrency sector continued to grow thanks to the increased institutional and individual interest, and in spite of the turbulent developments.

At the same time, filings for trademarks related to the metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have recorded a decrease as well, as shared by Kondoudis in additional separate tweets for each, posted on April 5. 

Specifically, the number of new US metaverse trademark applications is down 45%, as there were 1,819 filings in the first three months of 2022, while the same period in 2023 saw 835 new metaverse-related filings with the USPTO. In total, 2022 recorded 5,850 filings, compared to 1,914 in 2021 and 990 in 2020.

As for the NFT-related trademarks, they were down about two-thirds from the same period in 2022, as the USPTO received only 885 such trademark applications in the first quarter of 2023, compared to 2,530 in 2022. The total of NFT-related filings in 2022 amounted to 7,746, compared to 2,154 in 2021 and a mere 27 in 2020.

That said, new developments indicate that the world is far from losing interest in the metaverse sphere, especially in light of renewed interest in artificial intelligence (AI) sparked by the popularity of OpenAI’s text-based platform ChatGPT. 

For instance, the Chief Technology Officer at Meta (NASDAQ: META), Andrew Bosworth, recently said that the company was investing heavily in AI for the benefit of developing its metaverse plans, allowing users to create personalized, highly realistic graphics and virtual environments based on text input to the AI.

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