IP ownership
Hong Kong IP holding and patent box
AGATE reviews Hong Kong IP holding and licensing structures for software, patents, and brand rights where the legal file must match the commercial facts.
Structural question
Which IP rights, contracts, revenue streams, and decision rights should sit in Hong Kong, and what counsel record supports that choice?
The company receives IP revenue, but ownership, licensing, development, and enforcement history are not clean.
Software, gaming, licensing, or patent income enters Hong Kong without a clear rights narrative.
The structure claims IP control without matching people, decisions, contracts, or advisor review.
Rights are moved after value is already visible, creating tax, reporting, and valuation pressure.
IP ownership record
Patents, software, brand, data, licensing agreements, development history, revenue sources.
Holding company, licensing terms, board authority, bank narrative, counsel review.
Contracts, invoices, source code or patent record, transfer support, ongoing review.
What AGATE prepares
Identify what is owned, licensed, developed, used, or merely referenced.
Align licensing, development, support, distribution, and service contracts.
Coordinate patent box or concession analysis only where facts support it.
Prepare a documented explanation of IP revenue, counterparties, rights, and control.
Common questions
Can IP be moved to Hong Kong?
Sometimes. The answer depends on rights history, development facts, intercompany terms, contracts, valuation, tax review in the current and target jurisdictions, and bank support for any post-transfer royalty flow.
A rushed transfer of IP that already has revenue or a value benchmark creates exit-tax, valuation, and disclosure exposure that is hard to unwind.
What is the Hong Kong patent box regime?
The Inland Revenue (Amendment) (Tax Concessions for Intellectual Property Income) Ordinance 2024, gazetted on 5 July 2024, applies a concessionary profits tax rate of 5 percent to qualifying intellectual property income, against the standard 16.5 percent rate, using the OECD nexus approach.
Eligible IP currently includes patents, plant variety rights, and copyrighted software, where the income is sourced in Hong Kong and the qualifying expenditure is tracked. A local registration requirement applies from 5 July 2026, two years after the gazette date.
Is patent box work a headline service?
AGATE treats patent box work as counsel-reviewed structuring, not as a front-page promise divorced from facts.
The regime rewards genuine research and development, ownership, and qualifying expenditure tracking; it does not rescue a structure that has the wrong owner, the wrong contract chain, or the wrong development history.
Official sources
- Intellectual Property Departmentwww.ipd.gov.hk/
- Inland Revenue Departmentwww.ird.gov.hk/
- Companies Registrywww.cr.gov.hk/
Discuss your structure
If IP revenue is arriving in Hong Kong and the rights assignment, development history, or intercompany terms are not yet documented, the exposure is already visible to the next tax authority or bank that reviews the file. Describe the IP, the rights chain, the revenue, and the jurisdiction footprint in a private enquiry.
No anonymous nominee work, no false substance, no bank misrepresentation, and no claim of universal asset protection.