1
to decide to grant
CONFIDENTIAL
-'AL-
The Hong Kong Patent System after 1997
The main arguments which lead the Working Group
against setting up a Patent Office in Hong Kong patents
(a)
(b)
(c)
:
Hong Kong's manufacturing industry does not produce many patentable inventions. In the 10 years from 1974/75 to 1983/84, 7,243 UK patents were registered in Hong Kong. Of that number, 171 (2.36%) were registered by patentees domiciled in Hong Kong;
Patent rights are usually limited to the country in which the patent is obtained. It follows that it is not necessarily cheaper or quicker to obtain patents under the original grant system unless the patent is for use solely in Hong Kong. I f a patent registered in Hong Kong will ultimately be for use overseas, then a system of registration in Hong Kong first and then in other countries might prove to be more cumbersome and expensive. As the domestic market is comparatively insignificant, Hong Kong inventors will naturally wish to protect their products by applying for patents in their principal marketsi.e. United States or Europe;
The small number of applications will make it impossible for the Hong Kong registry to gather adequate information for search and examination to match that of either the European Patent Office or the Chinese Patent Office. For example, the UK Science Reference Library holds the specifications and abstracts of every one of the British patents of investion since 1617 and receives patent publications
from overseas and currently holds some 22 million overseas patent publications;
CONFIDENTIAL
/ (d)