The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Director General Francis Gurry lauded China's strong performance in international patent and trademark filing.
WIPO revealed that China filed 43,168 applications under the organization's patent cooperation treaty (PCT) in 2016, up from 29,839 two years ago.
This compares to the 56,595 and 45,239 applications filed by the United States and Japan respectively.
China's trademark and industrial designs filings, which are handled by WIPO's Madrid and Hague systems, also showed strong growth last year, with China ranking fourth in terms of the number of global trademark applications made in 2016.
Overall, some 233,000 PCT applications were registered in 2016 (up 7.3% from 2015), with 52,550 Madrid applications filed across the globe (up 7.2 percent).
A further 18,716 (up 13.9%) design applications were documented by WIPO, meaning that all three of the Geneva-based organization's international patent filing systems posted growth in 2016.

Source: SIPO