Firms protest over names sold on car plates

Business leaders urged the government to stop selling corporate names on vehicle registration plates, hours before company names such as HSBC, Ferrari and Sony were auctioned yesterday to a restaurateur for about HK$2 million.

In a letter to the Commissioner for Transport, the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce has urged the government to end a practice which it believes infringes companies' rights to their trademarks.

But the government insists the practice is legal, and that it has been approved by its own legal advisers.

Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Frederick Ma Si-hang said five enterprises had expressed concerns over the issue, but he argued that the sale had been backed by legal opinion from the Department of Justice and he was not worried that the practice infringed the companies' copyright. 'We had already consulted legal opinion when we formulated the scheme. We are confident that the personalised vehicle registration scheme can stand up to [legal] challenges,' Mr Ma said.

He said Alan Wong Chi-kong, the Commissioner for Transport, had the final power to recall any registration plates if these were considered inappropriate.

The companies' concerns were raised by the chamber in a letter on Friday, ahead of yesterday's Transport Department auction, in which a restaurateur who identified himself only as Mr Yeung spent about HK$2 million on personalised vehicle registration plates such as 'FERRAR1', 'HSBC' and 'SONY'.

In its letter, the chamber said it was worried that, besides infringing copyright, the practice breached the government's own policy of protecting intellectual property rights.