The awareness level of intellectual property rights among the business sector in Hong Kong is remarkably high, an Intellectual Property Department survey says.

The survey showed about 90% of respondents understood the areas that were protected by intellectual property.

Among the respondents, 88.3% knew that downloading photos, pictures or articles from the Internet without authorisation and reproducing them for business purposes was an infringement of IP rights, up10.1% over 2004.

About 90.4% of respondents understood that uploading photos, pictures or articles without authorisation to their companies' web sites was also an infringement of IP rights.

Pleasing results

Director of Intellectual Property Stephen Selby said he was pleased that Hong Kong business executives are gaining deeper knowledge about intellectual property.

He noted in the past two years, his department had spent about $2 million on projects to promote better understanding of IP among the business community.

About 95.6% of business executives thought that it was necessary to protect intellectual property rights in the business environment of Hong Kong while 96.1% agreed that intellectual property was a valuable asset.

More than two thirds, or 69.8%, believed that intellectual property infringement was quite serious at present.

The percentage of companies that have registered their trademarks, patents of designs in Hong Kong increased from 12.5% in 2004 to 22.9% this year.

About 18.9% of the surveyed establishments had assigned staff to manage intellectual property in their companies. The figure was much higher than last year's 10%.

Misconceptions still persist

About 79.5% of respondents considered that Hong Kong was an important place to register trademarks, patents or designs.

However, 44.8% mistakenly believed they could automatically obtain protection in Hong Kong if they registered their trademarks, patents or designs in the Mainland.

Also, 53.1% of business executives misunderstood the effect of a business name or company registration. They thought wrongly that having a business name or company registration was enough to stop other people from copying their company name as a trademark.

"This year's survey reveals the fact that we need to step up our efforts in clearing up such misunderstandings. With the support from trade associations, we shall organise seminars with the aim of correcting their misconceptions," said Mr Selby.