China sees increase in invention patent volume

BEIJING -- China has authorized more than 2.53 million invention patents over the past five years, with an average annual growth rate of 13.4 percent, according to the country's top intellectual property regulator Sunday.

More than 27.7 million trademarks were registered in the same period, an average annual increase of 29 percent, Shen Changyu, head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration said at a press conference.

In 2021, the country authorized 696,000 invention patents, with the average ownership of high-value invention patents reaching 7.5 per 10,000 people, nearly twice that at the end of 2017, Shen said.

He added that China also witnessed significant improvements in the efficiency of the use of intellectual property rights (IPR). The added value of patent-intensive industries reached 12.13 trillion yuan (about 1.88 trillion U.S. dollars), up 5.8 percent year on year, accounting for 11.97 percent of the country's GDP.

According to China's 15-year plan (2021-2035) for IPR development, a clear target has been set: the added value of patent-intensive industries should account for 13 percent of GDP by 2025.

China has been committed to promoting the orderly development of international IPR cooperation and competition. In 2021, Chinese companies filed 8,596 patent applications in countries along the Belt and Road, a year-on-year increase of 29.4 percent, while these countries in turn applied for 25,000 invention patents in China, Shen said.