Hong Kong Budgets $7 Million For IP Education

by Mary Swire, for LawAndTax-News.com, Hong Kong

19 January 2005

Unveiling the results of the Sixth Annual Survey on Public Awareness of Protection of Intellectual Property Rights on Tuesday, director of the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department, Stephen Selby revealed that the government has put aside $7 million to educate the public about IP issues over the coming year.

According to the survey, which contained questions regarding file sharing on the internet for the first time, more than 70% of respondents knew that sharing copyrighted music and other files was an infringement of IP rights, and just 10% undertook such activity "often" or "sometimes".

Mr Selby observed on Tuesday that:

"The popularity of the Internet has raised new issues concerning intellectual property rights protection." He went on to add that:

"Although the results of the survey in 2004 reveal that intellectual property rights infringement on the internet is not as serious as we have expected, we believe that more promotional effort is still required to educate the public, especially young people, about the importance of respecting intellectual property rights in the cyber world."

Of those questioned, 31.5% felt that "raising awareness of intellectual property rights protection and strengthening education" was likely to be the most effective way to improve the situation.

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