GENEVA — The U.S., the European Union and Japan have urged Hong Kong, a major textiles and apparel exporter, to beef up its enforcement against counterfeit goods and tighten laws on trademarks to stem abuse of brand names in mainland China.
Peter Allgeier, deputy U.S. Trade Representative, told a World Trade Organization session that Hong Kong continues to take steps to strengthen its intellectual property regime, but stressed, “We also note weaknesses in trademark protection, particularly with respect to company registration procedure.”
During a review of Hong Kong’s trade regime, Allgeier, also U.S. ambassador to the WTO, urged the authorities of the city-state “to improve enforcement efforts at the border to guard against imports of counterfeit products for transshipment or sale in the Hong Kong market.”
Similarly, the EU noted Hong Kong has “significantly been targeting production centers of counterfeit goods, resulting in the closure of most of them or their move out of Hong Kong.”
However, the EU said “problems still exist” on effective enforcement related to the circumvention or the transit of counterfeit goods through Hong Kong, the world’s biggest container port.
During the review proceedings, the U.S. conveyed to Hong Kong that it received reports that companies’ already-owned brand names “are being registered by unauthorized third parties as ‘businesses’ in Hong Kong, China, as part of company registration procedures, which are independent from trademark procedures.”
Subsequently, the U.S. noted, the third parties in question proceed to “license the use of the [unauthorized] business names on products distributed in mainland China.”
The U.S. urged Hong Kong to close the loopholes in its company registration regime that allows the registration of a new company as long as its name is not identical or even if the name is confusingly similar to registered trademarks.