By IANS,
Beijing ; China’s top 500 research and development firms have got 169,000 patents for their innovations in 2010, up 13.3 percent from last year, the China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) has said.
Among the top 500 companies, 41 had more than 1,000 patents, while 36 companies owned more than 200 patents for innovations, Xinhua reported citing the CEC report.
Each of the firms allocated, on average, 775 million yuan ($113.93 million) into research and development, an increase of 14.4 percent from 2009 and accounting for 1.4 percent of their total revenues, the CEC said.
Seventeen companies spent more than five percent of their revenues on research, while another 60 enterprises invested from five to 10 percent of their revenues.
In 2009, China filed 7,946 international patents, up 29.7 percent from 2008, and ranked fifth in the world, according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).