Bangalore: China became the world's leading patent filer after pushing US, Japan to 2^nd and 3^rd positions respectively with no trace of India among the first 10.

Thompson Reuter's research report states that Government is taking extreme measures for pushing innovations in areas like Technology, automobile and pharmaceuticals by providing attractive incentives to Chinese companies in filing patent applications. Domestic patent applications in china grew to a whopping 73 percent in the year 2010 from less than 52 percent in 2006. But according to legal experts, china had to improve a lot in the quality of the patents before it can lead the world in the number of innovations.

In the terms of overseas patents, Chinese companies are improving their rankings according to the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO). Published applications of patents by the Chinese government rose by 16.7 percent per year from 2006 to 2010 and are expected to reach 500,000 by 2015. In 2008, china invested around $65.8 billion in research and development.

Chinese companies however are not protecting their inventions by filing global patents. According to the Global innovators analysis, US leads the list of most innovative companies followed by Europe and Japan.

There has been an increase in the annual output of scientific literature by 80 percent in last 5 years, making china next to US in published scientific papers. According to David Brown, President of IP solutions business of Thompson Reuters "intellectual property is the bridge that connects innovation with economic growth"

The report clearly states that world's second largest economy is changing from the famous "made in China" image to a "designed in China" image.