SIPO: Patent apps up

The State Intellectual Property Office received nearly 2.4 million patent applications over the last year, an annual increase of 15.9 percent. There were 825,000 invention patent applications, increasing 26.3 percent, marking the first time that the number of invention patents has surpassed that of patent applications overall. Some 208,000 were granted. SIPO officials said that the trend indicates an increasingly optimized patent structure and rising patent quality.