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Govt committed to intellectual property protection
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Hong Kong is fully committed to the protection of intellectual property in all its forms for the encouragement of its growing international trade in services as well as for the security of its position as a trusted trading partner.
Moreover, this is also because of the need to preserve its strong manufacturing base, and as a major exporter of creative works, Hong Kong has substantial intellectual property assets of its own to protect.
Addressing a luncheon meeting today (Thursday), the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, said that in this pursuit the Government had a key role to play.
He said already Hong Kong was well equipped to protect intellectual property now, and after 1997 would continue to be equipped to the highest international standards.
The Governor noted that the present legal regime for intellectual property protection in Hong Kong was excellent.
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"It is comparable with the standards in other developed economies and in some
for example, the protection of integrated circuit layouts we are in advance of many countries," Mr Patten said.
He said much work was now under way to review intellectual property laws in the run-up to 1997 with new laws to protect patents, copyright and designs to be presented to the Legislative Council in the coming twelve months, together with a bill to modernise the trademarks law.
On another positive aspect, Mr Patten noted that the Chinese and British Governments had agreed on the basis for modernising and localising intellectual property laws in the territory as well as to the continued application of major international intellectual property treaties.
Mr Patten said that the Government was committed to backing up good intellectual property laws with effective enforcement despite the fact that enforcement of intellectual property laws throughout Asia was problematic with the extraordinarily rapid spread of technology that allows huge amounts of copyright material to be reproduced easily and illegally.