China-based inventors applied for a record-setting number of patents last year.
The country accounted for more than a million submissions, according to an annual report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (Wipo). It said the figure was "extraordinary".
Many of the filings were for innovations in telecoms, computing, semiconductors and medical tech. Beijing had urged companies to boost the number of such applications.
But some experts have cast doubt as to whether it signifies that the country is truly more inventive than others, since most of China's filings were done locally.
A total of 2.9 million patent applications were filed worldwide in 2015, according to Wipo, marking a 7.8% rise on the previous year.
China can lay claim to driving most of that growth. Its domestic patent office - the Property Office of the People's Republic of China (Sipo) - received a record 1,101,864 filings.
That was more than its Japanese, South Korean and US equivalents combined.
But Chinese inventors were more reticent about seeking patent rights abroad.
According to Wipo, they filed just 42,154 applications outside their borders - Huawei and ZTE, two smartphone and telecoms equipment-makers, led the way.
By comparison US-based inventors sought more than five times that figure. And Japan, Germany and France also outnumbered the Asian giant.
In Europe, creating a new look for a manufactured object is not enough to qualify it for a patent - there must also be a technical aspect featuring a new process, improvement or concept that would not be obvious to a skilled person in the field.
In China, however, creating a distinctive new design - based on an object's shape, pattern and/or colour - is sufficient, so long as the product can be sold or used independently of other parts. The US also affords similar patent rights.
China-based inventors applied for a record-setting number of patents last year.
