Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province was again ranked first among 157 sub-provincial cities and prefecture-level cities in a national appraisal for administrative protection for intellectual property rights in 2021.

This is the second year in a row that the city has topped the ranking, according to the Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision.

The application for IPR administrative protection currently costs less and is more convenient and efficient than legal protection, the other protection model for IPR in China, noted experts.

Since 2021, Ningbo has accepted 126 offline patent administrative adjudication cases, with the average processing being 71 days, a 30 percent year-on-year decrease. Meanwhile, the city handled 2,025 patent dispute cases regarding online e-commerce, with the average processing period being 14 days.

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

A total of 55,069 patents were authorized in Ningbo in the first 10 months of 2021, up 8.91 percent year-on-year. The number of invention patents rose 55.02 percent year-on-year to 6,503, bringing the total number of valid invention patents owned by the city to 37,041, which means there are 39.4 invention patents for every 10,000 residents.