(Source: China Daily)

Despite being the world leader in annual patent applications, China is far from being an innovative country, experts said.

China received 825,000 invention patent applications in 2013, a 26.3 percent increase year-on-year, and the total was the highest in the world for the third consecutive year, the State Intellectual Property Office said on Thursday.

Of the applications, 208,000 were granted, including 147,000 filed by domestic applicants. The country held 587,000 valid domestic invention patents by the end of 2013 and has realized the goal it set in 2011 in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), the office said.

"The growth in patent applications shows that both individuals and enterprises are paying more attention to intellectual property protection by patenting their inventions," said Gan Shaoning, the office's deputy director. "It also shows that our country is making great strides toward becoming an innovative economy."

However, it doesn't suggest that China has joined the world leaders as an innovation-oriented economy, experts said.

Tao Xinliang, director of Shanghai University's IPR College, stressed that only by increasing the technology transfer rate — the frequency with which inventions borne out of academic research reach the commercial marketplace — can China stake its claim as a creative country.

"It's more about quality than quantity," Tao said. "In some major key areas we still heavily rely on foreign technologies without enough self-research and development.