The Customs & Excise department has launched a scheme to promote online auctioning with integrity.

The department's Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau Head Tam Yiu-keung said four local Internet service providers, trade associations and intellectual property rights owners of several brand names have joined the scheme.

The four participating ISPs are eBay Hong Kong, Go2HK, SUNeVision RED-DOTS, and Yahoo! Hong Kong.

Partnership to protect intellectual property rights

The participating trade associations include the Entertainment Software Association, IFPI (Hong Kong) Group, Motion Picture Association, and Motion Picture Industry Association.

The brand name owners covered by the scheme are adidas-Salomon International Sourcing, Burberry Asia, Chanel, GUCCI Group (Hong Kong), LVMH Fashion Group, Nike Inc, Sony Computer Entertainment Hong Kong, and Sony Corporation of Hong Kong.

Mr Tam said this is another strategic partnership between the department and the industry to protect intellectual property rights.

Scheme aims to end piracy activities

Under the new Scheme "E-Auctioning with Integrity", the participating ISPs will step up monitoring of goods auctioned on their sites.

Whenever the intellectual property rights owners come across any suspected counterfeit goods on offer, they will alert the auction sites concerned. The auction sites will take prompt action to remove the items in question from the sites.

Mr Tam said the scheme will be a highly effective measure to prevent piracy activities at auction sites.

"With this pro-active move of the intellectual property rights industry players, Customs officers will be able to direct more resources to deal with counterfeiting crimes on the Internet that involves syndicated activities or of a more serious nature," he said.

Under the close surveillance and information exchange between Customs, ISPs, and intellectual property rights owners, Mr Tam said potential offenders will find it much harder to evade detection.