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HK's Intellectual Property Protect Efforts Fruitful
Hong Kong has put in place a highly advanced legal regime for the protection of intellectual property and the strength of this regime is recognized internationally, a Hong Kong official said Wednesday.
Addressing a seminar entitled "Benefiting from Intellectual Property," Secretary for Commerce and Industry Chau Tak Hay said:
"Hong Kong must have an effective system for protecting intellectual property rights," to encourage innovation as well as investment on research and development.
Economic growth of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region increasingly depends on innovative and knowledge-intensive activities, which generate new ideas and processes that can be copied and exploited by competitors.
To protect intellectual property rights effectively, Hong Kong, in the last four years, has completely modernized the laws for protecting patents, registered design, copyright and trade marks, bringing them into line with the highest international standards, Chau said.
Hong Kong's IP rights protection efforts is recognized worldwide, said Chau, referring to the fact that last month, after a thorough view by the World Trade Organization (WTO), Hong Kong's IP laws were highly regarded by other WTO members as being fully consistent with the international standards laid down by the WTO.
Instead of being complacent with current achievements, Hong Kong has kept its laws under constant review to make sure they are in line with the ever-changing situation, Chau said.
In June, Hong Kong enacted new legislation to clarify the Copyright Ordinance to put it beyond doubt that anyone who knowingly uses an infringing copy of copyrighted work in the course of business commits a criminal offense.
The government is planning to put the law into effect next year after wide publicity, Chau said.
To further enforce the legal regime, Hong Kong has substantially increased both the manpower for enforcement and the penalties against the production and sale of infringing products, Chau said.
The government has enacted tough legislation to control the manufacture of optical discs, prevent bootlegging. It also has classified certain piracy and counterfeiting acts as offenses under the Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance.
As a result of the government's strong enforcement efforts, in 1999 alone, Hong Kong seized some 16.5 million pirated optical discs and 14 production lines, and arrested some 2,700 persons for copyright infringement.
The government's action against copyright piracy at the retail level has also been very successful. Last year, there were some 1 000 retail outlets of pirated compact discs with some 5 million pirated discs in the market place at any one time.
At present, there are fewer than 100 outlets with some 100,000 discs in the market place at any one time. The reduction in volume is about 98 percent, Chau said.
Although the piracy situation is well under control, the government will keep up its efforts, Chau said.
Noting enforcement action by the government alone will not be sufficient, he said the government must enhance public education and will spend some 17 million HK dollars (2.18 million U.S. dollars) between 1999 and 2002 for this purpose.
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