Thank you.
As I was mentioning, this survey of 16,000 Canadian companies revealed that 58% of companies were familiar with IP, and 18% held at least one form of IP. Similar to other surveys, we confirmed that IP ownership is more present in high-growth firms and those that innovate and export.
What is particularly interesting about this survey is that we asked companies directly how their use of IP contributed to their business. Almost 60% of all firms recognized at least one contribution of IP. This included increased business value, increased revenue, expanded markets, increased business collaboration and increased employment. These are the companies themselves telling us that the use of IP has led to direct benefits.
We also asked what challenges companies had in terms of seeking IP. While 86% of respondents did not experience difficulties in filing, 14% did indicate some challenges, two in particular. One was with regard to complexity of the process and the other was with regard to the time to acquire IP rights. We're conducting a deeper dive into the survey results and developing approaches to address these two areas specifically, as we've been doing for a number of years.
With regard to complexity, seeking IP rights, of course, is a complex process, but we are using the results of this survey to identify differences across regions, technology areas and with respect to under-represented groups. We're using this to help target our IP awareness programs that provide information to help people understand and use IP. We work in close collaboration with many partners across Canada.
Specifically with regard to the challenge of time to acquire IP, as the overall demand for IP and pace of innovation continues to rise, the timely delivery of quality IP rights is critical for success. Specifically in the area of trademarks, a number of factors have converged to bolster this demand. First of all, there's been continuous growth for trademarks over the past decade. In 2012 there were approximately 50,000 trademark applications. I mentioned that in 2020 it was up to 70,000. In fact, during the pandemic that has increased even more. In the last fiscal year, we had 80,000 trademark applications. That represents about a 60% growth in the last decade.
Another very important factor here is that Canada joined an international treaty for trademarks called the Madrid protocol, which allows companies to file in many countries simultaneously. This has led to a robust international demand. In fact, in 2020, which was the first full year Canada was a member of this international treaty, the Madrid protocol, fully 27% of our applications came through that treaty. Canada ranked fourth in the world for Madrid applications.
In terms of surging demand, we know that trademarks historically have been linked to GDP, but we found that during the pandemic, when we early on expected that there would be a reduction in trademark applications, we in fact witnessed a difference and a delinking of that trend over time. Applications remained resilient in Canada despite the economic slowdown early on in the pandemic.
The final point that is leading to a surge in demand is the change in the composition of applications. This was highlighted during the pandemic. We have done work with the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United Nations body responsible for IP. We released a report a few weeks ago that tried to identify why IP continued to surge during the pandemic. What it found was that such areas as online retail, cloud computing and consumer electronics surged. That speaks to how the economy adjusted during the pandemic. Likewise, there was a noticeable increase in pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. That demand spiked very early on in the pandemic.
What that has led to in Canada is that for the first time in recent memory, we are facing a growing inventory and turnaround time for our trademarks.
In response, we have engaged with many IP experts in the community, both domestically and internationally, on a way forward, and in early 2021 we launched a recovery plan aimed at reducing backlogs and turnaround times in trademark examination. Our plan consisted of a series of measures to improve timelines, including increasing capacity and adopting new technologies, and we launched a new service in April of this year consisting of automated pre-assessment of trademark applications.
With that, just over the last few months, we've noticed a considerable change in our ability to tackle the backlog. If we had not taken action last year, our backlog would have surpassed 187,000 applications, but what we found with our work was that our backlog peaked at 160,000 in July and last month there was a decrease, so we're on a good path currently. We have a long way to go in terms of addressing our backlog and getting back to pre-surge timelines and inventory.
I'll stop there, Chair. Thank you.