China's unmanned spacecraft Shanzhou 8 blasting off into space.
15 patents for the new technology used in the mission were granted last year by the government.
Last year China recorded a total of 1.63 million patent filings, more than any other country in the world.
Steve Dickenson is a US lawyer specializing in Chinese intellectual property law.
He says this news is significant because, although Chinese patents aren't always recognized outside the country, it shows how fast China's intellectual property law is developing.
"If you file a patent in China, China has a very good legal system for enforcing patents. And Chinese use that system quite aggressively to protect themselves."
The number of patents filed in China last year was over 30 percent more than in 2010.
Some say this shows a change from 'made in China' to 'designed in China'. Steve Dickinson again.
"If the Chinese aren't designing anything they won't try to protect anything, right? But when they start designing their own stuff and making their own films and making their own music and their own copyrightable material then it occurs to them, maybe we ought to protect it because we can't get any value if we don't protect it. So, yeah, it's part of that transition."
But he says the strength of China's legal system for recognizing patents is not always recognized outside China.
"Foreigners live in this dream world thinking that doesn't exist in China, and so they fail to reap the benefits of what the Chinese have done."
To help foreign firms understand intellectual property law in China, some embassies here have staff focusing on the issue.
"I am the IP, intellectual property, attaché to the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong…"
Tom Duke is based at the British embassy in Beijing. He admits some companies do think twice about entering China for fear of copyright infringement.
"It is a problem. Whether it is purely a problem of perception or whether there's some substance underneath it and they're correct in having these worries, I imagine it probably falls somewhere in between. Things are changing very fast in China so perceptions can become out of date very quickly if you're not here on the ground watching, speaking to people, finding out what's going on."
For its part, China's State Intellectual Property Office has pledged to continue to strengthen the country's IP system.
Back in space, the Shenzhou mission is just the start of China's plan to create a manned space station by 2020. So this is likely to be a source of many more Chinese patents in the years to come.
For CRI, I'm Dominic Swire.
