Intellectual property protection not only plays an important role in the real world, but is also a crucial part of the Internet, dramatically changing people’s lives over the past few decades.

China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd, the world’s second-largest Internet company by stock market value - next to Google - now has the most users in the nation.

"Although intellectual property protection is not the only means to promote development in the industry, it is very significant for companies to achieve success," said Chen Yidan, one of Tencent’s founders and its chief administrative officer.

According to Tencent’s annual report, the company’s revenue totaled 12.44 billion yuan in 2009, a 73.9 percent increase from the previous year. Net profits hit 5.16 billion yuan last year, up 85.2 percent from 2008.

Chen said that Tencent has long been building its core competency through independent innovation and has established a compound protection system that covers domain names, copyrights, trademarks and patents.

To date, the company has applied for more than 2,000 patents and has been granted 500, raking it with the biggest Web companies in the world, Chen said. Its number of approved patents is expected to surpass 1,000 this year, said Wang Huotao, director of Patent Group in R&D Management Department of Tencent.

                                                                                                      Source: China Daily