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Vobile Group CEO Bernard Wang explains why Hong Kong is the perfect place for his copyright protection empire
Copyright protection may be a given in today’s digitally driven society, but some 20 years ago, the need for it was not quite so obvious. Seeing the technological advancements of the early 2000s, however, entrepreneur Bernard Wang decided the protection of digital assets was going to be big business—and the idea for Vobile was born.
Having received his master’s degree from the University of Florida, Wang moved to Silicon Valley to begin a career as an engineer. “In the early days, I participated in several ground-breaking research and development projects, including the MPEG digital video encoding chipset, and compression systems for digital satellite television and HDTV,” he says. “Around that time, we also began seeing video streaming on the internet and mobile devices, and I thought this was going to change the industry, in terms of the way movies and TV are distributed.”
A content defender
That’s when Wang realised there was an opportunity to solve an impending problem before it started. “In a world where everyone is holding a smartphone, we can carry video anywhere we want, and that’s where we saw the challenges,” he says. “Digital content can be copied everywhere, and piracy was going to really impact revenue for the copyright holders of this content. So we believed that a technology or service was required to help owners protect their creations and revenue.”
Wang started offering software-as-a-service with digital asset content protection through fingerprinting and watermarking technologies. Through its patented software, Vobile safeguards the copyrights and revenues of movie studios, streaming platforms and even Web3 services.
Going global
A decade later, Wang decided to bring Vobile Group to Hong Kong. “In 2018, we decided to go public and launched a successful IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,” he says. “We were the first and probably still the only start-up to have begun in the US and to go public in Hong Kong, but there were good reasons for this.”
Headquartering Vobile in Hong Kong allows the company to maintain a connection to the global digital content network while also accessing the vast market in mainland China. But perhaps more crucial was the opportunity to nurture the company within the ecosystem of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP). “The InnoPark in Tai Po was a natural fit for us because it offers us world-class facilities, resources and networks to support our innovation and growth,” says Wang. “[The city] has so much potential to become a thriving regional innovation hub, especially in the digital space, and InnoPark organises events to facilitate business development and exchange of ideas. With this, we’re eager to contribute to Hong Kong’s digital transformation.”
Vobile is well placed to realise these ambitions. Given that the company’s patented software is built on automated identification technology, it was using artificial intelligence before it became mainstream. “Now, with [AI-generated content] and the development of the direct-to-consumer media model, there are even more changes to the production and distribution of creative content,” he says. “[Vobile] is in a great position to strengthen its leadership in digital content rights identification, within Hong Kong and globally.”
For more from HKSTP see the Made in Hong Kong content hub here.