The Copyright Protection Center of China (CPCC) recently issued its 2014 Analysis Report on China's Software Copyright Registration. According to the report, China registered copyrights for 218,783 software programs last year, exceeding 200,000 for the first time.

From 100,000 to 200,000 in three years

"The number is a surprise," says Suo Laijun, deputy director of the CPCC. It took twenty years for the annual registration number to reach 100,000. However, the number has since doubled in only three years. This is mainly because of the rapid development of the software industry and the increasing awareness of copyright protection among copyright holders. China's software copyright registrations are in a phase of rapid growth.

The number of apps copyright registration doubles

Software copyright registrations in popular fields, represented by APPs, Internet of Things, embedded and geographic information, showed rapid growth in 2014. The number of copyright registrations in China for apps increased to 30,742, 20,120 more than the previous year, an increase of almost two hundred percent . At present, the increase in apps copyright registrations is the fastest of any type of software.

Corporations hold the majority

From the copyright holders' perspective, there were 72,147 new copyright holders in 2014, 30 percent more than in 2013. Of these, 51,340 are corporation copyright holders, accounting for 71 percent of the total. They registered 172,570 software copyrights, making up 79 percent of the total. Corporations make up the absolute majority of software copyright registrations.

In addition, 667 universities and colleges and 936 research institutions registered 25,624 software copyrights last year.

Beijing represents more than 20 percent of the total registrations

Copyright holders from two municipalities, Beijing and Shanghai, as well as the three coastal provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang registered 140,300 new software copyrights in 2014, 64 percent of the total. There was no change in the ranking compared with the previous year. Beijing topped the ranking overall with 48,650 software copyright registrations, 22 percent of the total.

Applications software is the key

The four main types of software copyright registered in 2014 were infrastructure software, middleware, applications software, and embedded software. Among these, 157,220 were for applications software, accounting for 72 percent of the total. Applications software is still China's core area for software research and development.

This article was edited and translated from 《2014年我国软件著作权登记量首破20万件大关》, source: People's Daily Online.