HK & Guangdong: Cross-border Fight as Fakes to Africa Rise

Fake goods worth HK$7.69 million were seized in three joint operations by Hong Kong and Guangdong in the 11 months to April, with a rising trend of such products being sent to Africa.


Louise Ho Pui-shan, head of the Customs and Excise Department's Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau, said the fake goods were mostly medicine, handbags, watches and electric appliances.


There were three rounds of cross- boundary operations targeting the smuggling of fake articles by sea and by post from June last year to April.


Hong Kong officers seized 48,105 infringing items in 19 cases and Guangdong detected six cases involving 1,760 pieces of fake goods.


Ho said customs of the two places will closely monitor goods being shipped to Africa. "There is an increasing trend of transporting infringing goods to Africa," she said.


Speaking at the 14th meeting of Guangdong/Hong Kong Expert Group on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights, Director of Intellectual Property Ada Leung Ka-lai said the two sides share the same vision to protect intellectual property.


"Even though the law is territorial and there are differences in the legislation, we do have common international norms on protection of intellectual property in different areas," she said.


Leung said combating online infringement will be their main focus.


"With the development of technologies, we believe the future challenge will be the area of online infringement," Leung said.


Director-General of the Intellectual Property Office Ma Xianmin said the two sides exchanged 53 pieces of information and completed 19 projects. There will be more intelligence exchanges between the two places.