China Focus: Digital-tech IP sustains China's innovative development

China's intellectual property (IP) sector has made steady progress and improved its quality, with strengthened patent reserves in digital technologies, the country's top IP regulator said Tuesday.

IP plays important roles in sustaining the construction of a national innovation system and cultivating an open economy and good business environment, said Hu Wenhui, deputy head of the National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA), at Tuesday's press conference.

China's strengthened patent reserves in digital technologies have greatly supported the development of the country's digital economy, Hu said.

According to statistics from 35 technical fields classified by the World Intellectual Property Organization, by the end of this June, the top three fields in China's effective invention patent growth rate were computer technology management methods, computer technology, and basic communication programs.

Their year-on-year growth rates were 56.6 percent, 38.2 percent and 26 percent, respectively, much higher than the domestic average of 20.4 percent over the period.

China attaches great importance to digital economic development. The scale of China's digital economy surpassed the 50 trillion yuan (around 7 trillion U.S. dollars) landmark threshold in 2022.

By the end of 2022, the number of effective invention patents in the core industries of China's digital economy was 1.6 million. Among which, 1.27 million were made by Chinese entities, accounting for about 80 percent of the total, the NIPA statistics show.

"The patent innovation in the core industries of China's digital economy is growing vigorously, with significant features," said Ge Shu, a senior NIPA official, at the press conference.

Invention patents in the core industries of the digital economy are growing rapidly. Over the 2016-2022 period, the average annual growth rate of the authorized invention patents in core industries of China's digital economy reached 18.1 percent, 1.5 times of that for the total authorized invention patents during the same period, according to Ge.

The innovation momentum of domestic enterprises within the digital economy is strong. By the end of 2022, they made about 70.9 percent of effective invention patents in the core industries of the digital economy.

The eastern regions show obvious innovation advantages in the digital economy. The Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region made up 71.3 percent of China's effective invention patents in the core industries of the digital economy.

More foreign companies are coming to China to develop digital-economy patent layout. By the end of 2022, 95 countries and regions had 327,000 invention patents in the core industries of the digital economy in China.

"In the next step, the NIPA will continue to strengthen the monitoring of core industries of digital economy and key digital technology patents to better serve the development of China's digital economy," said Ge.