On 1 April 2001, the Intellectual Property (Miscellaneous Amendment) Ordinance 2000 (the "Ordinance") came into effect. The Ordinance has been somewhat controversial as it amends, among other things, the Copyright Ordinance and the Copyright Piracy Ordinance.
The amendments to the Copyright Ordinance now make it an offence for any business (not just those whose business was dealing in infringing articles) to possess and use in the course of business infringing articles. The main aim of the Ordinance was to contain corporate end-user piracy activities, in particular the use of pirated software by businesses in Hong Kong. However, the criminal sanctions which it introduced do not catch only software piracy but also seemingly less "serious" acts of infringement such as making copies of newspaper articles and using them in the course of teaching.
