In 2011, Heilongjiang province saw its patent filings hit 23,432, up 128%, the No. 1 growth rate across the country, according to information released from a press conference convened by the provincial government on the morning of May 15.

Statistics show that last year, invention patents owned by every ten thousand local residents in the province reached 1.51, ranking the 12th in China. As of now, the province has held a total of 119,623 patent applications and 66,090 issued patents with 12,236 newly approved last year, up 80.5%.

The breakthrough accomplishments achieved partially benefited from a serial of measures adopted by the Provincial Intellectual Property Office to further cultivate some 54 patent exemplary enterprises. It is also worth mentioning that 34 local businesses filed their first-ever patent applications and 12 companies each submitted more than one hundred applications within a year.

In 2011, the province also made tremendous progress in combating IPR violations and counterfeiting with officials resolving 36 cases on patent violations and investigating business entities for more than 70 times, involving over 9,000 patented commodities.

In addition, local authorities have collected about 4,800 patent projects and selected nearly 1,000 of them for popularization and introduction. 372 patent licensing contracts were duly handled with the transaction amount totaling 90.68 million yuan.

(Source: IPR in China)