The total number of invention patents filed in China in 2022 reached 4.21 million, of which 3.28 million were held by inventors from mainland China, officials from the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) said at a press conference recently. According to Hu Wenhui, deputy director of the CNIPA, China is the first country to pass the threshold of 3 million. The number of high-value patents increased by 24.2 per cent year on year to 1.32 million, or 9.4 patents per 10,000 people, up from 7.5 per 10,000 in 2021, reflecting the improvement in the quality of China’s intellectual property invention, according to the CNIPA.