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Commerce and Industry

Registration

The Intellectual Property Department is committed to providing high-quality and responsive registration services to the public. The department provides various electronic services to enable efficient and cost-effective registration and management of trade marks, patents and registered designs. The registers of trade marks, patents and designs are maintained in electronic format, allowing searches of relevant data in Chinese or English through the internet, at any time, free of charge. The electronic filing system also provides a secure and user-friendly environment for intellectual property owners or agents to file their applications at any time.

By using the department's interactive services, owners of intellectual property rights or their agents can make changes directly to certain particulars of their registrations and applications recorded in the registers. These changes are updated instantly in the various registry records. The electronic services, particularly electronic filing, have been well received. In 2014, the proportions of electronic filings for trade mark, patent and design applications were 56 per cent, 73 per cent and 69 per cent respectively, an increase of 1 per cent, 8 per cent and 3 per cent respectively compared to the previous year.

Trade Marks

In 2014, the Trade Marks Registry received 40,063 applications. During the period, 34,251 marks were registered, an increase of 8.9 per cent as compared with 2013. The principal countries/ areas out of the 119 filing applications were:

Hong Kong

15,173

Mainland

8,564

France

Taiwan

873

858

USA

3,861

Korea, Republic of

820

Japan

2,483

Switzerland

731

United Kingdom

956

Germany

664

The register had 342,696 registered marks by the end of the year.

Patents

The Patents Ordinance provides for the grant of standard patents based on patents granted by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, the United Kingdom Patent Office or the European Patent Office (in respect of patents designating the United Kingdom). It also provides for the grant of short-term patents, which may be registered following local formality examination procedures. The Patents Registry received 12,542 standard patent applications and 587 short-term patent applications in 2014, and 5,932 standard patents and 522 short-term patents were granted, a decrease of 9.6 per cent and 2.9 per cent respectively as compared with 2013.

The government is preparing legislative proposals to amend the Patents Ordinance to establish an original grant' patent system and to refine the short-term patent system.

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