Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province was recently listed among the list of the first group of 10 national demonstration zones for intellectual property rights protection in China.

The other nine places that made the list released by the China National Intellectual Property Administration are Binhai New Area in Tianjin, Pudong New Area in Shanghai, Nanjing and Suzhou in Jiangsu, Hangzhou in Zhejiang, Hefei in Anhui, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong, and Chengdu in Sichuan.

In 2022, Ningbo authorities accepted 3,624 cases related to intellectual property rights, and solved 4,022 cases in that regard, down 17.82 percent and 1.06 percent year-on-year respectively.

That same year, the city was ranked first among 159 sub-provincial cities and prefecture-level cities in a national appraisal for administrative protection for intellectual property rights.

The city's improved protection of intellectual property rights has spurred local innovation and entrepreneurship.

A total of 76,127 patents were authorized in Ningbo in 2022, up 5.1 percent year-on-year, according to official statistics from the Ningbo Municipal Market Administration.

The number of invention patents rose 22.92 percent year-on-year to 9,611, bringing the total number of valid invention patents owned by the city to 47,084.