China has made an array of achievements in 2019 to create a favorable environment for innovation and high-quality intellectual property (IP) development, a senior official in the area of intellectual property said Thursday.

Shen Changyu, director of the National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA), made the remarks at a press conference briefing about China's IP development in 2019.

Marked headway has been made in patent examination efficiency, with the processing time for an invention patent application cut to about 20.5 months and the period for high-value patents examination reducing to 16.6 months, according to Shen.

In 2019, China had 13.3 invention patents per 10,000 people and the total number of effective registered trademarks exceeded 25 million, with every 4.9 market entities owning one registered trademark on average.

In 2018, the added value of China's patent-intensive industry reached the tune of 10.7 trillion yuan, accounting for 11.6 percent of the country's GDP, while the added value of China's copyright industry stood at 6.6 trillion yuan and occupied 7.4 percent of GDP, said Shen.

The official then added that according to the Global Innovation Index 2019 published by the World Intellectual Property Organization, China made it to 14th place, ranking first among middle-income economies.

According to a 2019 China business environment survey done by the U.S.-China Business Council, about 58 percent of U.S. companies think that China has beefed up intellectual property protection in the past year, marking the highest level since the survey was launched in 2011.

With 58,990 applications filed in 2019 via the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) System, China overtook the U.S. as the top source of international patent applications filed with WIPO.