CO129-438 - Public Offices - 1916 — Page 72

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considered, owing, no doubt, to the attitude taken up

by the Board of Trade in the matter of renewals.

Probably

Possibly the fear of reprisals was the motive power in both cases, and of course to cancel trade-marks

would have been a much more drastic measure than to

refuse renewals.

The position in Hong Kong may be summarised

more in detail as follows:-

Enemy trade-marks fall into two classes

(a) Marke belonging to enemy subjects or firms

not carrying on business in Hong Kong.

(b)

Marks belonging to enemy subjects or firms carrying on business in Hong Kong.

As to the former (a), to cancel or sell these would be to go directly contrary to the policy of

His Majesty's Government, and the same applies to the

refusal to renew.

Ae to (b). To cancel or refuse permission to

renew those would also have been contrary to the

policy of His Majesty's Government, but they might

no doubt have been sold in the liquidation of the

owning firms. After considerable deliberation, we

came to the conclusion that, in the special circum-

stances of Hong Kong, we would not sell, as we are

doing elsewhere, (See paragraphs 4 and 5 of 16796)

the reasons being briefly that it would be impossible

to make the sales effective in China, where the

principal use of the marks would be, and that it was

feared that they might be bought by agents for

the

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