Intellectual Property Rights
Investigations in Hong Kong
Conducting intellectual property rights investigations in Hong Kong essentially protects the
rights of intellectual property owners within the city and across China. These
investigations help mitigate and prevent situations of intellectual property infringement by
utilizing the expertise of private investigators or law enforcement agencies, ensuring the
sanctity of the creator's original work.
Why Work with Us for Intellectual Property
Investigations in Hong Kong?
Suzzess provides all-around specialized advice, investigations, and various services in
relation to all matters of intellectual property protection in Hong Kong. Through our
relationship with several leading corporations, our professional consultants provide advice
and expertise related to the filing, prosecution, registration, protection, enforcement and
licensing of Trademarks, Patents, Industrial Designs, Trade Secret and Copyrights.
We also have extensive experience in intellectual property theft investigations in Hong
Kong. Our techniques allow us to provide a scientific method to substantiate or challenge
allegations of intellectual property theft. Our professional team offers our clients a
professional service that performs annual market research to collect product and pricing
information, assisting our clients to effectively monitor their products, determine their
authenticity, and identify the distribution of the grey market.
How Should You Protect Your Intellectual Property
Rights?
The trademark owner's long-term anti-counterfeiting strategy must focus on the following
3
issues:
-
Product improvement to make counterfeiting harder
You should at least be able to identify counterfeit products, and preferably, to be
able to discourage counterfeiting. Such devices and components can be invaluable in
detecting counterfeit products in intellectual property investigations. Generally,
counterfeiters will not include such "extras". They can also serve to make it more
difficult to copy the product. It is essential that trusted experts are kept up to date
with these anti-counterfeiting devices.
-
Appropriate commitment of resources
Counterfeiting of products, particularly in China, is a problem that cannot be
resolved quickly. To keep the problem under control, resources must be committed from
the outset to investigate and act against suspected counterfeiters. Resources cannot
just be committed based on sales in China or Hong Kong but also must consider the
potential worldwide risk from the export of counterfeit products. This is an expensive
proposition but before any of the above areas of initial operation are costed, it is
appropriate for the client to identify whether, in principle, they agree with the
strategy set out above for their intellectual property investigation.
-
Long-term intelligence gathering
All intelligence gathered during anti-counterfeiting and anti-parallel import
actions if relevant, must be collated and centrally coordinated to have available
information concerning previous infringements in any future intellectual property
investigations.
How Can Our Intellectual Property Investigation
Services Help You Protect Your Rights and Interests in Hong Kong?
Suzzess is able to offer tailor-made programs for clients in Hong Kong to meet the above
objectives and to conduct intellectual property investigations in an effort to locate the
sources of production in major cities across China.
There are essentially 8 key services that we offer in the area of intellectual property
investigations:
-
Preliminary information:
Identify for Suzzess, the current trademark and patent registration situation in
the PRC for the purpose of the intellectual property investigation. Precise contact
details of producers that are in China and the parameters of the agreements with them
and products which they are allowed to manufacture.
-
Training:
Appoint a person with technical expertise of its products to liaise with Suzzess
and answer all and any technical and identification questions that arise - also to
meet
with investigators and provide some background and training and to set up and train at
least one individual in Hong Kong and one individual in China for the purposes of
identification of counterfeit or genuine/modified products. This person will need to be
trained to a certain level to be able to assist in civil and criminal legal proceedings,
as well as to give evidence for intellectual property investigations.
-
Precise identification of the targets:
Through informants, development of intelligence, database and statutory searches or
visits on the ground. Determination through statutory searches and enquiries size, scope
and connections of the target to determine whether there are connections which could
cause future problems for investigation (police/military/political connections) and also
to gain an insight into whether damages recovery issues are possible.
-
Investigation:
From the sample purchase, identify the most suitable targets for further
intellectual property investigation in Hong Kong. Suzzess may require conducting a mix
of surveillance and trash searches to develop sources of supply information and/or
conduct certain sensitive contact enquiries. These efforts are focused on targets
identified as major suppliers with the goal of determining whether sources of supply are
in China or elsewhere. It may be that meetings are required with informants in the field
to develop sources of information. The trademark owner may wish to consider an
intelligence/evidence-gathering exercise through the set up of an undercover
distributor/retail operation, to identify distributor channels, warehouses and
manufacturers.
-
Approach for Samples & Evaluation:
Try to obtain counterfeit sample purchases directly from the target, either
directly or from another country, depending on the nature and size of the operation.
China undercover on-shore and off-shore approaches suspected targets with a view to
obtain evidence of counterfeiting. The sample purchase would target areas where the
infringing products are located, and it is anticipated that the client could give some
leads to those areas. This would then be followed by a review of all
information/evidence and identification of appropriate action in the PRC, including
administrative, criminal or civil action depending on the scope of the problem
identified and the evidence available.
-
Raids & Inspections:
Once a target is located in the intellectual property investigation, Suzzess can
assist in liaising with the local authorities in Hong Kong or the greater PRC. We'll
take steps to arrange a raid, seize the counterfeit products, assist with documentation
and obtain sanctions against the counterfeiter.
-
Parallel imports/exports:
If it is found that the client has a parallel imports problem in China, the keys to
successful control are (1) to monitor sales by distributors and ensure that sales do not
exceed what can reasonably be sold; (2) marking of codes to identify the source of a
product on the product and packaging so that the source of products can be easily
identified; (3) regular monitoring of the market to identify as quickly as possible,
potential sources of parallel imports and (4) use of legal tools in those jurisdictions
which allow controls on parallel imports to stop the flow into those jurisdictions.
-
Monitoring of the marketplace:
Suzzess Hong Kong can conduct market surveys and internet monitoring to trace the
origins of the counterfeit merchandise suppliers and to assess the scale of production.
Additionally, we closely monitor the emergence of counterfeit goods at trade fairs and
file complaints to relevant law enforcement authorities as part of our intellectual
property investigation strategies.
Contact us to keep your peace of mind with our
intellectual property investigation and other services in Hong Kong
Suzzess is in a prime position to provide advice and assistance in each of these areas. To
book your consultation for an intellectual property investigation in Hong Kong, or if you
have any questions, fill out an online enquiry form here.
In addition to intellectual property investigation, our range of expertise and services
includes corporate investigation, private
investigation, insurance claims and fraud
investigations, pre-employment
screening, due diligence
checks, and background
checks in Hong Kong and beyond. If you need assistance in any of these areas, please
contact us at +(852) 3705 3790 to learn more about how we can support you.