China's top intellectual property administrator said here Thursday that China has become the third major country in the world next to Japan and the United States to handle the application invention patents.

In 2006, intellectual property offices across the country received 122,318 patent applications from the Chinese and 88,172 applications from foreigners, said Tian Lipu, director of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), noting the number of domestic and foreign applications rose 30.8 percent and 10.4 percent respectively over those in 2005.

In the past five years, Tian said, China received about 1.964 million patent applications from both domestic and overseas applicants, with an annual growth of 22.7 percent on the average.

China's patent law regulates that patents fall into three categories: invention, new design and innovative utility model.

Most of the invention patents, the most valuable in existing three categories, came from multinationals or their localized joint ventures. Home companies, meanwhile, contributed to the biggest chunk of patent applications in the other two categories, according to the SIPO.

Multinationals have taken China as an ideal place to apply for patents, but patent authorization procedures are still time-consuming.

Owing to bad staff shortage, the SIPO and its functioning body China Patent Office usually need three to four years to authorize an invention patent, which makes some innovative technologies rampantly infringed before being effectively protected by intellectual property laws.

China introduced the global prevailing mechanism of intellectual property protection by adopting its first patent law in 1985.

"We have achieved a lot in protecting intellectual property," Tian said. "But we are still lagging far behind the developed countries in encouraging home-bred inventions and intellectual property awareness."

 
(Xinhua News Agency October 19, 2007)