Digital assets have enjoyed impressive adoption rates from retail investors in recent years, but the ecosystem is readying itself for an avalanche of institutional investments, given the spike in trademark applications.
Trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis stated that trademark applications about digital currencies and allied goods and services in 2022 stood at 4,708. Even more impressive is the fact that his data only included applications from January to October, while the figure for 2021 stood at 3,547.
On the other hand, applications for the metaverse and virtual worlds climbed to a staggering 4,997 compared to the 1,890 filed in 2021. The remarkable increase is a testament to the growing interest in the metaverse despite an underwhelming year for the industry.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were not left out of the trademark filing spree, as Kondoudis noted that digital collectibles filings for 2022 nearly reached 7,000 compared to the paltry 242 recorded in 2021. The month of March saw 1,082 NFT-related trademarks being filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), while August notched only 522 applications, coinciding with the global slump of NFT transaction volumes.
The firms behind the Web3 trademark applications cut across the technology, fashion, sports, education, retail, and finance sectors. A cross-section of the firms stated that they are driven by the features of blockchain, while those in the payments industry are optimistic about its potential to improve the state of cross-border transactions.
The firms behind the figures
In the last month, payment giant Visa filed fresh applications as it sought to deepen its involvement in the Web3 space. The firm applied for its name to be used in software “to view, access, store, monitor, manage, trade, receive, transmit, and exchange” digital assets and NFTs.
Visa’s filling mirrors MasterCard (NASDAQ: MA), which sought to allow its logo to be used in virtual worlds. Ulta, a cosmetics company, rode the trend to file its application for digital collectibles and a makeup and salon service in the metaverse.
Rolex, Meta (NASDAQ: META), Capital One, and Nissan form a bevy of companies to have field trademark applications relating to the metaverse and digital assets in the last month. Metaverse filings are largely driven by the predictions by Citi Technology’s research team that the ecosystem would become a $10 trillion industry by 2030, with firms jostling for a piece of the pie.
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