Intellectual Property Lawyers in Singapore
Registering what can be registered, protecting what cannot, and enforcing both. Most IP problems we see were created earlier by an agreement that did not say who owned the work.
We advise businesses on protecting and enforcing intellectual property in Singapore: registering trade marks and designs, dealing with copyright and confidential information, licensing rights out, and acting when someone uses what is yours.
What can be registered, and what cannot
Trade marks are registered with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, for specified classes of goods and services, and renewable indefinitely. Registration gives you a right you can enforce cleanly. Without it you are left arguing passing off, which requires proving reputation, misrepresentation and damage, and is far harder work.
Registered designs protect the appearance of a product, and the timing matters: publish or sell before you file and you may have destroyed your own novelty.
Patents protect inventions, and again the disclosure rules are unforgiving.
Copyright arises automatically on creation, with no registration and no fee. That sounds convenient and creates the most common problem in the field, which is that nobody documents who owns it.
Confidential information and trade secrets are protected by obligations of confidence rather than by registration, which makes the contracts and the internal handling the whole protection.
The ownership question nobody asks in time
When work is commissioned rather than done by an employee, ownership does not automatically follow the money. Under Singapore’s current copyright framework, the creator generally retains copyright in commissioned work unless the agreement says otherwise, which surprises businesses that paid for a logo, a photograph, a website or software and assumed that was the end of it.
The same applies to contractors and agencies. It is fixed with a written assignment, which is cheap in advance and awkward afterwards, because by then the other side knows exactly how much you need it.
If you are commissioning creative or technical work, the agreement should say who owns the output, who can use it and for what, and what happens on termination. Our corporate and commercial team drafts those.
Trade mark work
We handle the whole lifecycle: availability searches and clearance before you commit to a name, filing and prosecution, responding to objections, oppositions both ways, renewals, and portfolio management as a business expands into new classes or new markets.
Clearance before launch is worth more than anything else here. Rebranding after a demand letter costs a great deal more than a search would have.
Enforcement
Where a right is being infringed, the routes include a demand, an injunction to stop the conduct, damages or an account of profits, and in the right case border measures against counterfeit goods arriving in Singapore.
Speed matters more than in most disputes, because delay undermines the case for urgent relief. Our note on copyright infringement in Singapore covers that ground, and our civil litigation team runs the proceedings. Where the wrong is reputational rather than proprietary, see also defamation and slander.
Commercialising it
Rights are worth what you can do with them. We draft and negotiate licences, distribution and franchise arrangements, endorsement and sponsorship agreements, and the IP terms in commercial contracts, including what happens to the rights when the relationship ends.
Intellectual property in Singapore: frequently asked questions
Do I need to register my trade mark?
You do not have to, and you will wish you had. Registration gives a right that is straightforward to enforce. Without it you are relying on passing off, which means proving your reputation, that the public is being misled, and that you have suffered damage. That is a much longer and more expensive road to the same place.
We paid a designer for our logo. Do we own it?
Not necessarily. Where work is commissioned rather than created by an employee, copyright generally stays with the creator unless the contract assigns it. A great many businesses discover this when they try to register the mark, sell the business, or stop the designer reusing the work. It is fixed with a written assignment, ideally before you pay.
Does copyright need to be registered here?
No. Copyright arises automatically when the work is created. There is no registry and nothing to file, which is convenient until you need to prove who created what and when. Keep records of authorship and dates, and put ownership in writing whenever work is commissioned.
Someone is using our brand name. What can we do?
It depends on whether you have a registration, on what they are using it for, and on how long it has been happening. The usual first step is a demand that sets out the right and what is required, which resolves a good proportion of cases. Where it does not, injunctive relief is the usual objective, and delay weakens it.
Can we protect an idea?
Not as an idea. The law protects expressions, inventions, signs and confidential information, not concepts in the abstract. What can protect a business plan or a process before it is disclosed is a properly drafted confidentiality agreement, which is worth having in place before the meeting rather than after it.
We are expanding to other countries. Does our Singapore registration help?
Trade mark rights are territorial, so a Singapore registration protects you here. There are international filing routes that make protecting the same mark in multiple countries more efficient than filing separately in each, and the sequence and timing affect cost. Worth planning before the expansion rather than during it.
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