Hong Kong to sign data-sharing deal with UN intellectual property body: Paul Chan Hong Kong is set to sign a deal with the World Intellectual Propoerty Organisation (WIPO) on Monday to pave the way for sharing relevant court judgments with the United Nations agency, the city’s finance chief has revealed. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po on Sunday also highlighted the importance of intellectual property as an emerging high-value industry that could complement other sectors with traditional strengths in the city. “This involves safeguarding research investment and value creation of inventors and technology companies through patent applications. Also, professional valuations allow patents to be traded or used as collateral for financing,” he wrote in his weekly blog. “As a promising emerging industry, intellectual property can mutually support innovation and technology and finance sectors to pursue highly efficient development.” Chan said the Hong Kong government on Monday would sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the WIPO, allowing the city’s judiciary to share landmark judgments in the field of intellectual property with the WIPO Lex judicial decisions database. The data currently contains about 2,200 case decisions from more than 40 jurisdictions. The finance chief said the city’s inclusion “would enable them to gain a clearer understanding of Hong Kong’s legal protection system, strengthening their confidence in utilising us for [research and development] and related investments”. He added that Hong Kong’s high-level intellectual property protection system aligned closely with international standards under common law and would be more widely referenced by the international market. The WIPO is also scheduled to announce this year’s list of top 100 global innovation clusters on Monday. Chan noted that the “Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou” cluster had ranked second for five years in a row. “As Hong Kong and our brother cities in the Greater Bay Area continue to increase their investment in innovation and technology and promote closer cooperation to complement each other’s strengths, I am confident that this year’s ranking will be even more impressive,” he wrote. Chan said that this year’s list would start including “venture capital and venture deal-making” as an evaluation factor, better reflecting the dynamism of a region’s information and technology activities. Looking ahead, Chan said that Hong Kong would further leverage the unique advantage offered by the “one country, two systems” governing principle to deepen cooperation with its counterparts in the rest of the Greater Bay Area. It would also capitalise on the governing principle to strengthen the city’s function as an international innovation hub and play a key role in the global innovation chain, making a greater contribution to China’s goal of becoming a technology powerhouse. Shanghai signed similar MOUs with the WIPO in 2023, 2018 and 2014, which led to the establishment of the Shanghai International Intellectual Property Forum and the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Shanghai Service, among other initiatives. The “Shanghai-Suzhou” cluster ranked fifth globally in the WIPO’s Global Innovation Index in 2023. As an individual city, Hong Kong ranked 18th in last year’s Global Innovation Index, while mainland China took 11th place. The list was topped by Switzerland, Sweden and the United States. But in the science and technology cluster rankings, which are rated by economy or cross-border regions, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou bloc took second place, overtaken only by the “Tokyo-Yokohama” region. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3323812/hong-kong-sign-data-sharing-deal-un-intellectual-property-body-paul-chan (ICE HONG KONG)

Fonte notizia: South China Morning Post