Press Release - November 10, 2005

Cultural policy-makers from Asian economies have joined renowned cultural and creative personalities at the Asia Cultural Co-operation Forum (ACCF) 2005 in Hong Kong this week to share insights on how to build the brand image of a country or city through the development of cultural and creative industries.

There are two delegates from Vancouver: Dr Thomas Leung, founder and president of Culture Regeneration Research Society; and Mr Joseph Koo, a well-known composer. Dr Leung is a speaker at the opening session, delivering his �Reflections on Chinese Culture & Philosophy in the Era of Globalization�, and Mr Koo will be speaking at the �Intellectual Property Protection� session on �Ideal and Reality� as a music composer.

Built on the success of the past two years, the ACCF 2005, the third cultural co-operation forum organized by the Home Affairs Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is being held at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts from November 9th to the 12th (Saturday) under the theme of "Brand Asia". Participants are discussing the branding of places, products and services through the strategic exploitation of intellectual properties and cultural capital.

Apart from cultural ministers from Asian countries, including Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, a large delegation of senior cultural officials from more than 20 provinces and municipals of the People's Republic of China (PRC) have also joined the Forum.

Mr Pushpendra Rai, Acting Director, Intellectual Property & Economic Department, World Intellectual Property Organization, will be doing a presentation on �The Strategic Use of Intellectual Property for Economic & Cultural Development�, and Ms Anne C Y Choi, President, Asian Patent Attorneys Association, Hong Kong Group, will be talking about �The Legal Aspects of Digital Download� tomorrow (Friday).

Commenting on the forum, the Director of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (Canada), Mr Bassanio So, said he was delighted to see cultural personalities from Canada were also contributing to this forum. �Hong Kong is not only an international business centre that honours the rule of law, it is also known to promote the cultural development in the Asia Pacific region.�

�As a place with great respect for the rule of law, Hong Kong vows to provide protection for brand names and intellectual property (IP) at a level second to none in Asia,� he said.

�We work very closely with the Customs and Exercise Department to fight against copyright and trademark infringements in Hong Kong. We take the protection of IP rights very seriously. Our dedication on the IP protection is reflected on the recent BitTorrent (BT) case, of which the a man was successfully charged with violating copyright laws through the use of sharing film files over the BT network,� Mr So said. �On this, Hong Kong became the first place in the world to convict a person for using BT to distribute copyright protected material on the Internet.�



For more information, please contact: Stephen Siu, Assistant Director (Public Relations) of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office at: (416) 924-5544 or email: [email protected] or Elison Chu, Senior Information Officer, [email protected].

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