More than a million patent applications have now been lodged in China, with the Information Technology (IT) sector leading the charge.

Lou Qingjian, vice-minister of Information Industry, said yesterday that the number of patent applications in the sector in China has also grown rapidly in the last five years due to the IT boom.

A total of 1,030,032 patent applications for inventions have been lodged with the State Intellectual Property Office since it began collecting statistics. Of those, almost a fifth (198,018) relate to the IT sector.

Chen Yaozhong, an official from Shanghai Intellectual Property Office, said he expected IT would soon account for an even greater share of total patent applications, boding well for the industry.

Zhou Weidong, vice-director of Shanghai Municipal Information Commission, added that the increase in patent applications for the IT sector has accelerated dramatically in the first half of this year, up 130 per cent over the same period last year.

Zhou said central and local governments are working hard to maintain this momentum.

Lou believes it is worth developing a system to monitor the growth in IT intellectual property to chart the sector's development.

The officials said the government should spend more on training professionals and experts in IT intellectual property rights.

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