BEIJING — With the continued growth of patents and strengthened protection efforts, China has basically achieved the goal of building a country with high-level creation, utilization, protection and management of the intellectual property (IP), the country's industry watchdog said on April 22.

China has become a veritable IP power with a huge increase of patents over the past 12 years, said Shen Changyu, head of China's National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA) at a press conference during the National IP Publicity Week 2020 in Beijing.

From 2007 to 2019, the number of valid invention patents held on the Chinese mainland has increased from 84,000 to 1.86 million, and the number of valid registered trademarks has increased from 2.35 million to 25.22 million.

China has taken the global lead in the number of applications for patents. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, with 59,000 applications filed in 2019 via the Patent Cooperation Treaty System, China overtook the United States as the biggest user of the system.

"Remarkable achievements in IP utilization have effectively promoted economic and social development," Shen said, citing that the added value of China's patent-intensive industries in 2018 reached 10.71 trillion yuan (about $1.51 trillion), contributing 11.6 percent to its gross domestic product.

In 2019, the nation's box offices grossed 64.3 billion yuan, nearly 20 times that of 2007. The total trade of China's IP royalties last year increased nearly five times from 2007, reaching $41 billion, Shen added.

IP protection has improved the business environment. According to Shen, in a survey on social satisfaction of IP protection in China last year, the result hit a record high of 78.98 out of 100 points.

According to the Global Innovation Index 2019 by the World Intellectual Property Organization, China moved up to 14th place globally, and ranked first among world's mid-income economies.

In recent years, the NIPA has attached greater importance to improving the efficiency and quality of China's intellectual property services.

Last year, the average processing time for trademark registrations was shortened to 4.5 months, compared with six months in 2018, and the processing time for high-value patents examination was reduced by more than 15 percent to 17.3 months.

The NIPA has so far approved the establishment of 26 centers nationwide to reduce processing times and costs of intellectual property rights protection.

The industry watchdog also took measures to curb abnormal applications and trademark hoarding. The NIPA has launched an online patent quality monitoring system, reporting 38,000 abnormal patent applications and rejecting 39,000 abnormal trademark applications last year.

Meanwhile, a batch of high-value patents have been acquired in recent years mainly in the fields of artificial intelligence, mobile communications, high-speed railways and biomedicine.

China's IP industry this year will continue to promote high-standard protection and improve efficiency and quality in dealing with filings, Shen said.