Hong Kong Plans To Ramp Up Copyright Protections

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

20 June 2005

Speaking on Friday at an Intellectual Property Society Luncheon, Hong Kong's Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, John Tsang revealed that the government plans to bolster the jurisdiction's copyright protection regime in order to foster an environment conducive to the development of a knowledge-based economy.

The Minister explained that the proposals have been developed after considering views from a recent public consultation exercise and discussions with concerned groups. The government launched the consultation in December 2004, and received 430 submissions.

"We need to strike a delicate balance between the principles of strengthening our copyright protection regime and the need for reasonable use of copyright works by the general public," he explained.

Speaking with regard to the scope of business end-user possession criminal liability, which has long been the subject of controversy, Mr Tsang announced that:

"Having carefully considered the opposing views of users of copyright works and copyright owners, we propose to maintain the existing scope of business end-user possession criminal liability to cover only four categories of copyright works: computer programs, movies, television dramas, and musical recordings."

"To address copyright owners' concerns about printed works being copied easily and distributed widely, the Government proposes to introduce a new business end-user criminal offence. This will target significant infringement activities involving the act of copying for distributing, or distributing infringing copies of copyright works published in four types of printed publications, namely, books, newspapers, magazines and periodicals."

However, he acknowledged that teachers may need to make and distribute copies of copyrighted material in the four types of printed works. Therefore, he revealed that the government proposes to exempt non-profit-making schools and government-subvented schools from the proposed criminal offence.

To promote better corporate governance and accountability to prevent copyright infringements in business, Mr Tsang announced, the government proposes to introduce a new criminal offence against directors or partners if their company commits an act attracting business end-user criminal liability, unless there is evidence that they did not authorise the crime.

Apart from civil liability, the Government also proposes to introduce a new criminal offence relating to the commercial dealing of devices, products or components and the provision of services on a commercial scale which circumvent technological measures applied to a copy of a copyright work.

"This new offence will help combat the prevalent sale of game consoles installed with modified chips, which contributes substantially to the existence of a thriving market for infringing copies of computer games. It will also deter the emergence of other commercial activities undertaken to circumvent the technological measures applied to a copy of a copyright work distributed in the digital environment, such as songs available for sale on the Internet," the Commerce Minister explained.

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