Abstract The whimsical and ephemeral trends of the fashion world can be confounding and yet rewarding at the same time. As luxury fashion brands such as Gucci, Balenciaga, Vetements Louis Vuitton, and Versace capitalize on ironic cultural references to rejuvenate sales and capture new customer segments, their actions have resulted in unanticipated implications for trademark laws. Simultaneously, countercultural commentary is also taking the form of parodic and satirical fashion merchandise which audaciously play with the semiotic signs of these famous marks. This chapter explores the regulation of fashion trademarks from an interdisciplinary perspective and interrogates the bewildering celebration of the conspicuously inauthentic and culturally subversive prevalent in luxury fashion today.

The Singapore Copyright Act was first enacted in 1987 and was largely based on the copyright regimes of the United Kingdom and Australia at that time. Major revisions to the Copyright Act were made in 1998, 1999 and 2004, which ensured that Singapore’s copyright regime was aligned to international norms and bilateral treaties, and was relevant to content that was being created, distributed and consumed digitally. A significant public consultation exercise was carried out, which culminated in the introduction of a future-ready Copyright Bill 2021 in July of this year, which sought to replace the Copyright Act 1987 in its entirety. The new Act is expected to be passed by Parliament after its second reading before the end of the year. Some key amendments certainly position the legislation to be future-ready as they strike an appropriate balance between protecting rights owners and enabling the public and other users to have...

Cultural perspectives on law are a growing part of contemporary legal scholarship and, in particular, semiotics has been argued in interdisciplinary legal scholarship on intellectual property (IP) to be helpful in illuminating some of the intractable issues encountered in the laws governing copyright, trademarks, and the right of publicity. Semiotics seeks to understand the operation of a given system or process by observing the function of signification, expression, representation, and communication. Famous trademarks, well-known copyrighted works, and celebrity personalities can function like Barthesian myths with universal ideological codings that are recognized globally, enabling them to be read as polysemous texts that invite playful semiotic recodings and post-structural disruptions. The invocation of semiotics in the study of IP signs is intimately intertwined with the freedom of speech. Semiotic readings of IP signs invite us to enter a world of possibilities that explore a more nuanced interpretation of legal doctrine and legislative provisions.

On 5 and 6 December 2019, the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore (“NUS Law”) hosted about 100 participants at the 8th Asian Privacy Scholars Network (“APSN”) Conference at its Bukit Timah Campus, convened by Professor David Tan. The conference was jointly presented by the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business and the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law (“TRAIL”)—both research centres at NUS Law. TRAIL was also launched by Mr Edwin Tong, Senior Minister of State for Law and Health, on the first day of the conference.The theme “Privacy, Confidence & Data Protection in the 21st Century” attracted 40 papers presented by scholars and practitioners from 17 jurisdictions. The kaleidoscope of papers covered a broad range of topics that included an interrogation of conceptual frameworks, practical analyses of personal data protection legislation such as the EU (“European Union”) General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and other national regulatory regimes, health data management, privacy issues at the Tokyo Olympics, privacy and the Hong Kong protests, and the surveillance economy. Professor Megan Richardson from Melbourne Law School, who delivered the first keynote address on Day One, advanced an account of five disruptive moments in the development of the common law, and the inherent disunity in the judicial conceptions of privacy over the decades. Mr Yeong Zee Kin, who delivered the second keynote address on Day Two, is the Assistant Chief Executive (Data Innovation and Protection Group) of the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (“IMDA”) and Deputy Commissioner of the Personal Data Protection Commission (“PDPC”). He shared how the “regulatory sandbox” had assisted the government in its policy formulations, and mooted the Model AI Governance Framework and the Trusted Data Sharing Framework.

This case note examines and comments on I-Admin (Singapore) Pte Ltd v Hong Ying Ting [2020] SGCA 32; [2020] 1 S.L.R. 1130). In this case, the Singapore Court of Appeal put forward a modified test for breach of confidence, departing from the traditional three-step test in Coco v AN Clark (Engineers) Ltd [1968] F.S.R. 415; [1969] R.P.C. 41.

Modern conceptions of dramatic entertainment have expanded to include diverse and previously inconceivable forms. The elements of apparent spontaneity in popular television shows like MasterChef, The Amazing Race and The Voice appear to be at odds with the traditional requirements of a predetermined script—which is commonly understood to be necessary for copyright protection of a “dramatic work”. Other forms of performances such as improvisation theatre, animal acts, fireworks and synchronised drones only add to a cacophonous collection that do not fit into our current state of copyright law that demands categorical recognition of works. This article explores, through a comparative analysis of developments in a number of Commonwealth common law jurisdictions, what may and should qualify as a dramatic work in Singapore in the 21st century.

In his critique of consumption, Jean Baudrillard contends that the consumer no longer relates to a particular object in its specific utility, but to a set of objects in its total signification. Thus, increasingly, when consumers make their purchases, they do not simply select goods and services purely for their functional or utilitarian values, but are buying into the significations of these commodities in the construction of their self-identities. Objects of intellectual property (IP), in particular copyrighted works, trademarks and the celebrity personality, represent far more than a bundle of legal rights. They are invariably associated with a set of cultural narratives and semiotic meanings which are ultimately consumed. A well-known literary or artistic work does much more than simply educate, inform or entertain; it also functions as a signifier of a set of signified meanings. A trademark does not only designate the source or origin of goods. Famous brands like Louis Vuitton, Apple and Nike possess particular configurations of meanings that offer peculiarly powerful affirmations of belonging and recognition in the lives of their customers worldwide. Celebrities, whose identities may be protected against commercial appropriation by the right of publicity, have become common points of reference for millions of individuals who may never interact with one another, but who have, by virtue of their participation in a mediated culture, a shared experience and a collective memory. This essay explores how the encoded narratives in certain objects of IP may be read as polysemous texts that invite playful semiotic recodings, culture jamming and poststructural disruptions. It also suggests how audiences who engage with works of copyright, trademarks and celebrities via such textual signification may avail themselves of a number of legal defences under the current legal regime.

A main reason for the success of arbitration is the widespread enforceability of resulting awards under the New York Convention. In contrast, there is no comparable enforcement regime for national court judgments. The most recent attempt, the Hague Choice of Court Convention, has only been ratified by Mexico, the European Union, and Singapore. For this reason, many parties may choose arbitration over litigation to resolve their disputes, even if arbitration suffers from other difficulties (eg inability to join parties who have not consented to arbitration, or to hear non-arbitrable issues). But what if a national court judgment could be ‘enforced’ as an arbitration award? That is the unconventional challenge to conventional wisdom that this article seeks to address. To put it another way, this article explores the possibility of ‘enforcing’ national court judgments under the New York Convention. The word ‘enforcing’ is used loosely here, because the solutions explored do not involve the actual enforcement of national court judgments. Rather, these solutions seek to enforce arbitration awards that order the same relief a national court judgment would grant, resulting in an effect that is identical to the enforcement of a judgment by the selected national court.

In his critique of consumption, Jean Baudrillard contends that the consumer no longer relates to a particular object in its specific utility, but to a set of objects in its total signification. Thus, increasingly, when consumers make their purchases, they do not simply select goods and services purely for their functional or utilitarian values, but are buying into the significations of these commodities in the construction of their self-identities. Objects of intellectual property (IP), in particular copyrighted works, trademarks and the celebrity personality, represent far more than a bundle of legal rights. They are invariably associated with a set of cultural narratives and semiotic meanings which are ultimately consumed.

In Singapore, both the rights of publicity and privacy are neither recognised under the common law nor statute. However, the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (PDPA) offers protection against unauthorised use and disclosure of “personal data” in certain circumstances, which in turn confers incidental personality rights in the form of a right of private action for breaches of the PDPA. Generally, data protection legislation are not intended or designed to protect against unauthorised commercial exploitation of personal data: (i) on or in products, merchandise or goods; or (ii) for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods or services. An individual’s whose personal data – i.e. name, image or any “data” that identifies him or her – has been commercially appropriated in advertising or merchandising will often have to seek recourse under right of publicity or passing off laws. This paper discusses the ambit of the PDPA and concludes that even though the right of publicity is not recognised in Singapore, the tort of passing off – and possibly even an action in defamation in exceptional circumstances – can offer robust protection for the commercial exploitation of one’s identity in advertising and selling.

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Copyright law is often premised on the identification of an author of a literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work, and then giving this author exclusive rights for a limited period to control the commercial exploitation of his or her intellectual creation. However, the hegemonic modernist position of the romantic authorial text has been challenged by numerous scholars who have argued that the meaning of a text lies not in its origin but in its destination. Roland Barthes’ work, controversial at the time of publication with its assault on modernity and the primacy of authorial control, has nonetheless laid the groundwork for an important body of scholarship on interpretive communities. Whether one adopts the position of neoconservative postmodernism or poststructural postmodernism, this article argues that a semiotic analysis of works of copyright as “signs”, “myths” and “polysemous texts” will nonetheless offer an important framework to understand the full reach of the transformative use doctrine in the United States today.