Intellectual Property
Intellectual property (IP) is a number of distinct types of legal monopolies over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions.
Trademark
Trademark can be composed by brand name, character, number, pattern, sound, smell or any combination of these elements.
A trademark applying for registration must be distinctive, and the public must be able to distinguish the goods and services of one trader from another. If a trademark involves geographical names or description of a specific product or service, objections may be raised by the approval authority.
It is a violation of law if a registered trademark is used without the permission of the trademark owner. The trademark owner may take legal action to stop further infringement and claim for damages from the infringer.
In order to protect the product and let the public know that the mark has been registered, the trademark owner should print the symbol ® next to the registered trademark. Infringement may have occurred if a mark is the same or substantially similar to a registered trademark, or a third party copies or counterfeits a registered trademark without consent.
Patent
A patent protects your invention by giving you, the patent owner, a legal right to prevent others from manufacturing, using, selling or importing your patented invention. Unlike standard patents, the grant of a short-term patent does not follow a substantive examination of its patentability. Therefore when it comes to enforcement of a short-term patent, the grant of the patent alone is not sufficient to ensure that the patent right can be enforced. Instead, in any enforcement proceedings before the court the patent owner has to prove that his or her short-term patent is prima facie valid. Patent owners should consult their legal or technical advisers on this aspect before taking steps to enforce their short-term patents:
- The person who may apply for the grant of a standard patent for an invention is
- the person named as applicant in a designated patent application for a patent for the invention, or his successor in title to the rights under the designated patent application in Hong Kong; or
- in preference to the person mentioned in paragraph (a), the person who is entitled to the property in the invention in Hong Kong.
- Subject to any determination under section 13, the applicant for a standard patent for an invention in proceedings before the Registrar shall for the purpose of those proceedings be deemed to be the person entitled to apply for the grant of a patent for that invention under subsection (1).
Copyright
Copyright Registration in PRC
The Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China was promulgated on September, 1990 and came into effect on June, 1991. The Copyright Law protects the following works:
- literary works
- oral works
- musical, drama, quyi, dancing
- fine art, photography
- movie, television, and video works
- engineering design, product design with illustrations
- maps
- other works protected by laws and administrative regulations Chinese citizens, legal persons or non legal person enjoy copyright for their works by whether the works are published or not. A foreign author enjoys copyright under the law for the work first published in China. The works by foreigner published outside of China also enjoys copyright protections pursuant to relevant agreements between the two countries or international treaties to which both are parties.
