Laser-pointer in hand, 11-year-old Lau Chun-hei delivered a presentation on his international award-winning safety cutter at the Intellectual Property Department's celebration of young inventors yesterday.
Chun-hei, a pupil at Pui Ching Primary School, was one of seven Hong Kong youngsters who won awards at the 21st International Invention, Innovation and Technology Exhibition - Asian Young Inventors Exhibition 2010 in Malaysia last month.
Competing against 100 participants from across the region, Chun-hei received the highest score and is the first Hong Kong student to win the World Intellectual Property Organisation Award.
Many schools are now promoting the invention of intellectual property among their student bodies, according to Lau Sai-chong, Chun-hei's father and the head of the design and technology department at Lingnan Dr Chung Wing Kwong Memorial Secondary School.
Lau chaperoned the seven child inventors to Malaysia for the competition, all of whom won one or two of the available 42 prizes.
The winners included Chun-hei, with two gold medals, and his nine-year-old brother, Ching-hei, who invented an environmentally friendly bottle top to restrict children's use of soap and shampoo.
Cheung King-fung, chairman of the Hong Kong Inventors Association, believes that young inventors are the future of an economically stable Hong Kong.