Forty-two awards worth a combined 4.2 million yuan ($670,000) were recently unveiled at Guangzhou's first patent contest.

Three of the gold prize winners and 19 other award recipients were honored for their combined 22.45 billion yuan in sales.

Another 10 winners have together filed more than 5,000 patent applications over the past two years, 3,470 of them for inventions, nearly 30 percent of the city's total.

(Source: China Daily)