The State Intellectual Property Office handled 1.12 million patent applications in the first half of this year, up 20.5 percent from the same period last year. The number of invention patent applications increased 20.9 percent to reach 424,000, the growth rate almost doubling that of the same period in 2014. The office authorized 749,000 patents in the past six months, including 161,000 invention patents.

(Source: China Daily)