China Law. Hong Kong Law. One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other.

IP wunderkind Danny Friedmann at IP Dragon does a very nice job laying out the primary differences between Hong Kong law and Mainland China law in his post, "How do the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong relate to each other regarding IPRs." The super-quick summary is as follows:

1. Different as night and day.
2. Registering your intellectual property (IP) in Hong Kong will not protect you in Mainland China and vice-versa.

A couple years ago I had an hour long conversation with a company regarding my firm assisting it in pursuing a trademark infringement lawsuit in China. It was not until I saw their actual trademark registrations that I discovered that when they were referring to "China," they really meant Hong Kong. This company had never registered its trademark in China and I had wasted an hour thinking it had a great case, when in fact it had no case at all. I have since learned to seek clarification as to what is meant by "China."