BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhua) -- The number of international patent applications from China hit about 43,100 in 2016, an increase of 44.7 percent from the year before, the State Intellectual Property Office said Wednesday.
By the end of 2016, China had about 1.1 million domestic invention patents, becoming the third country in the world to surpass the 1 million benchmark, after the United States and Japan.
Huawei and ZTE, two information and telecommunications technology giants, were among the most active in filing patent applications in the year, according to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Gong Yalin, head of the planning and development department of the office, said the problem with the nation's patents was that some were not of high quality and the volume of patents in some key fields was still small.
Efforts will be made to boost the quality of patents from the nation, according to Gong.
In addition, the number of international trademark registration applications from China ranked fourth globally in the year, the office said, without elaborating on the figures.