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The trade mark law of Hong Kong is based on the Trade Marks Ordinance Cap. 559, which came into force on April 4, 2003 and repealed the Trade Mark Ordinance Cap 43. The system established by this legislation is entirely separate to the system used in the People's Republic of China, pursuant to the "one country-two systems" policy. The superceded law and the current law share many similarities with the relevant legislation in the United Kingdom, a similarity which is also facilitated by TRIPs. A trademark (Commonwealth English: trade mark)[1] is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by a business to identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to set the business and its products or services apart from those of other businesses. ...
April 4 is the 94th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (95th in leap years). ...
2003(MMIII) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
One country, two systems (Simplified Chinese: 一国两制; Traditional Chinese: 一國兩制; pinyin: yī guó liǎng zhì; Jyutping: jat1 gwok3 loeng5 zai3; Yale: yāt gwok leúhng jai) is an idea originally proposed by Deng Xiaoping, then paramount leader of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), for the unification of China. ...
The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) is an international agreement on the subject of intellectual property. It covers copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, industrial designs, geographical indicia and integrated circuit layouts. ...
The new law introduced various substantive and procedural changes, such as expanding the legal definition of a trademark; including or broadening protection for certification marks, collective marks, and well-known trade marks; reducing the period of non-use for revocation purpose from five to three years; and simplifying and streamlining procedures for the registration of assignments, and "registrable transactions" such as licenses. A certification mark is a type of trademark whereby a trader uses the mark to indicate the origin, material, mode of manufacture of products, mode of performance of services, quality, accuracy of other characteristics of products or services. ...
Definition Collective trade marks are trade marks owned by an organisation (such as an association), whose members use them to identify themselves with a level of quality or accuracy, geographical origin, or other characteristics set by the organisation. ...
Procedure
Filing to registration Registration of a trade mark in Hong Kong commences with the filing of an application at the Trade Mark Registry of the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department. An application may cover one or more classes of products and/or services. The standard total cost for using the services of a trademark attorney to handle the filing of an application in one class is HK $4,300 (the professional component of this fee is recommended by the Hong Kong Law Society). There will be additional fees for extra classes, and for other stages in the registration process. A trademark attorney is an attorney-at-law specialized in trademark law. ...
Firsly, the application is assessed by an examiner for deficiencies which go to formalities. The next stage is substantive examination, where the main grounds of objection could be raised: absolute grounds for refusal (eg. where the mark is inherently not registerable), and relative grounds for refusal (eg. where the mark is identical or similar to mark covered by an application or registration filed earlier in time). A trademark (Commonwealth English: trade mark)[1] is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by a business to identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to set the business and its products or services apart from those of other businesses. ...
If any objections are overcome, the application will be accepted by the registry and published for opposition purposes for an extendible period of three months to allow third parties to object to registration of the mark on certain grounds.
Once any oppositions are resolved, a certificate of registration will be issued. The standard timeframe to registration for an application which encounters few if any problems or difficulties is 12 months.
Post-registration A registration for a trade mark may be subject to revocation by a third party if the trade mark has not been genuinely and continuously used for at least three years, and there are no valid reasons explaining the lack of use.
The old law The old trade mark law provided for a division in the register of trade marks, between "Part A" marks and "Part B" marks. Under this system, marks which were considered by the registrar to be less distinctive could only qualify for registration under Part B. Part B registration meant that certain rights were not available to the trade mark owner, which were otherwise available to the owner of a Part A registration. Under the new law, the division of the registrar into parts was abolished. Historically, a register was a sign or chalkboard onto which people would write cash transactions for later bookkeeping, often with chalk. ...
See also Copyright law in Hong Kong to a great extent follows the English model. ...
In law, particularly in common law jurisdictions, intellectual property or IP refers to a legal entitlement which sometimes attaches to the expressed form of an idea, or to some other intangible subject matter. ...
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