The Hong Kong patent registration system is territorial in nature though the Hong Kong sovereignty has returned back to China from United Kingdom in 1997, so the patent registered in mainland China or any other countries, including United Kingdom cannot be automatically extended to Hong Kong for legal protection. Separate filing in Hong Kong is a must if the applicant also wants to get their patents protected in Hong Kong. Generally speaking, the Patent Registry of the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department does not conduct substantive search and examination on the novelty or inventiveness of the invention to be applied, but only examines the patent application to ensure that it meets the formal requirements for filing.

In Hong Kong, there are two types of patent, i.e.

• Standard patent; and
• Short-term patent

Protection under the standard patents is renewable annually after the end of the third year, for a maximum of 20 years. Protection under short-term patents is renewable after four years from filing, for a maximum term of eight years. Since Hong Kong Patent Registry will only perform a formality examination; but does not usually conduct any search for prior patents or prior arts, so Hong Kong standard patent is usually granted within three months of the request for grant, while almost all short-term patent applications can successfully matured into grant and certificate within three months of submission of all the needed documents.

A standard patent is based on a grant by any one of the three designated patent offices, i.e. the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (“SIPO”); the United Kingdom Patent Office (“UPO”); or the European Patent Office (“EPO”) where the UK is a designated country and the grant follows the following two-stage process:

1. Request to Record the designated application which shall be made within six months of publication in the above-mentioned any of designated patent offices – SIPO, UPO or EPO;
2. then followed by a Request for Registration and Grant of a standard patent which shall be made within six months of grant of the designated patent application by SIPO, UPO or EPO.

Though Hong Kong is a member of the PCT through China’s membership, PCT applications must be extended to Hong Kong within six months of the publication of national phase entry in the aforesaid designated patent offices.

Unlike mainland China, English is also the official language in Hong Kong, so the applicant can file patent application either in English or in Chinese. If the application is filed in English, all the future proceedings for the registration and the patent registration certificate will be issued in English. If the application is filed in Chinese, then the future procedures and the registration certificate will be issued in Chinese, respectively. In spite of this, certain information in the application must be shown in both Chinese and English languages, for instance, the title of the invention and abstract must be given in both English and Chinese.