BEIJING, April 16 -- China has improved its intellectual property rights (IPR) management and received the most patent applications in the world in 2014 for the fourth year running, an official said on Thursday.

China received 2.36 million patent applications in 2014, including 928,000 invention patent application, up 12.5 percent year on year, said Shen Changyu, head of the State Intellectual Property Office on Thursday.

China had received a total of 16.1 million trademark applications by the end of March, said Liu Junchen, deputy director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

It now takes less than nine months for a trademark to be approved, about one month less than 2013, Liu said.

China still lags behind the developed countries in trademark work, with only about 1,000 trademarks for every 10,000 market entities, while the figure is about 3,000 in developed countries, Liu said.