Why the United States Remains the World’s Center of Trademark Power

Jan/11/2026

With the highest score in the International Property Index, the United States remains the most robust intellectual property environment worldwide. Trademark activity in 2025 reflects not only legal strength but also economic geography, sector priorities, and shifting language trends across states and foreign applicants seeking access to the US market.

In 2025, the United States again topped the International Property Index, scoring 95.17 points and reaffirming its position as the world’s most reliable jurisdiction for protecting intellectual property. This legal credibility helps explain why the US continues to attract trademark applications from abroad, particularly from China—including Hong Kong—followed by Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. Domestically, trademark activity remains concentrated in economic powerhouses: California, Florida, Texas, and New York account for the largest share of published applications, mirroring their roles as hubs for technology, finance, trade, and consumer markets. The dominance of service-based filings is especially telling. Education and entertainment, advertising and business services, and science and technology together make up nearly 43 percent of trademarks filed by US applicants, underscoring the country’s service-driven economy, while clothing stands out as the leading goods category at 11.2 percent.

Trademark naming trends in 2025 reveal how geography shapes commercial identity. Across the US, broadly aspirational words such as life, health, club, solutions, and group dominate, signaling trust, continuity, and scale. Yet state-level patterns diverge in revealing ways. California filings favor words like american, air, active, and ace, reflecting a blend of lifestyle branding and innovation culture. Florida largely mirrors national trends but adds strong place-based markers such as Florida and Miami. Texas trademarks split between high-frequency sectoral terms like energy and services and regional signaling through Texas itself. New York, by contrast, blends location-driven identifiers—NYC and New York—with community-oriented language such as choice, club, love, and awards. Together, these linguistic patterns show that while the US trademark system is national in scope, brand storytelling remains deeply local.