If you were to ask any student on the street today as to the means by which you are able to download music, chances are that he will be able to name you a myriad of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks where music is easily available in free and unlimited amounts. In contrast, ask any student about his idea of intellectual property (IP) and chances are that he will not be able to name the organizations that are responsible for protecting the IP rights of artistes, for example.
This striking contrast is indeed …

Patents are grants of statutorily prescribed exclusive rights in relation to an
invention for a specific period of time. Such grants are often described as a quid pro quo whereby the patentee receives the benefit of a monopoly in exchange for conferring new knowledge on the general public. The balance in such exchanges has however been altered with the introduction of the WTO’s Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (“the TRIPS agreement”), subsequently reflected locally in the Patents Act (Cap. 221, 2005 Rev. Ed. Sing.). With the advent of this …

Until recently, legal prohibitions on the illegal sharing of digital music seemed to be honoured more in the breach than the observance in Singapore. However, this month has seen high-profile enforcement actions against end users. On 17 October, the Recording Industry Association of Singapore (RIAS) filed with the police 25 new cases of illegal music file-sharing. Just days before, the police had seized the computers of seven illegal music file-sharers. Coupled with the imprisonment of two Singaporean men in February for the non-profit distribution of pirated digital music files through …

Intellectual property refers to creations of the human mind which when duly protected can become valuable property. Intellectual property comprises an open list of protected intangibles that is consistently growing. Some of the more traditional areas of intellectual property are copyright, trademarks, patents and rights related thereto.
Copyright is the exclusive right of creators of works to preclude others from
exploiting their created works. The traditional domain of copyright protection s in the sphere of literary or artistic orks, though recent times have seen debates over whether computer programs are copyrightable. Historians …