Letters | Becoming China’s intellectual property hub holds great promise for Hong Kong

Readers discuss how Hong Kong can spearhead the creation and management of platforms to enforce and license the large volumes of China-sourced IP, and the advantages the city has for those willing to grab them

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Published: 11:30am, 6 Jul 2022

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Hong Kong can be China’s intellectual property (IP) hub. China has made substantial progress in IP creation. We hear about Huawei and other major Chinese companies filing the biggest number of patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

But I would also note that Chinese residents filed more than 795,000 industrial designs in 2020, representing some 55 per cent of the worldwide total. That is a natural outgrowth of China’s rising contribution to global manufacturing value added.

From accounting for 9.8 per cent of the global manufacturing value added in 2000, just before it joined the World Trade Organization, China accounted for about 32 per cent of value added in 2020. As Chinese factories compete for new business, they innovate and come up with new designs, and the cost of procuring industrial design registrations in China remains comparatively cheap.

However, China-sourced IP punches much below its weight. You hardly ever hear about big damage awards overseas based on China-sourced IP. There is little expertise and rarely the will by small and medium-sized enterprises to enforce China-sourced IP overseas, where made-in-China products can be selling for up to 10 times the factory prices in China. That is leaving way too many chips on the table.

I have attended a number of Hong Kong Forums over the years. It was not unusual for Western presenters to recount the successes of utility patent pools and how those in the West are looking for new technologies to implement similar strategies.