There were 195,000 trademarks registered in the UK in the past year, an increase of 54 per cent on the previous year’s figure of 127,000.

Waiting times for trademark applications rose from three to four months in early 2021, up from the usual period of a few weeks, lawyers from IP law firm Mathys & Squire said.

The surge has forced the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to hire more than 100 new staff.

Since the beginning of this year, the UK has no longer been part of the European trademark regime, meaning businesses have to make separate applications in the UK.

Gary Johnston, partner and co-head of trade marks at Mathys & Squire: “Businesses from around the world have been forced to spend much more time and money on protecting their intellectual property separately in the UK.”

He added: “UK businesses have had exactly the same problem with their European IP. We’ve been tremendously busy filing applications for UK businesses in Europe too.”

“This huge volume of filings is unlikely to go away. Now we have left the European trade mark regime, this is the level of activity we can expect in the future,” Mr Johnston concluded.