Should Determinations of Trade Mark Similarity Consider Their Distinctiveness Acquired From Being Used in the Market?

Intellectual Property

The vast majority of trade mark disputes – whether they involve opposition, infringement or revocation proceedings – involve the same threshold question: are the competing marks similar or dissimilar? Only if the marks-similarity assessment yields a positive result can the registered proprietor of a trade mark proceed with his case to show that the other legal requirements set out in the relevant provision of the Trade Marks Act (e.g. whether the goods or services involved are identical or similar, and whether there is a likelihood of consumer confusion) have been satisfied.

Concordance Legalization: An Alternative Regional Trading Arrangement to the EU and USMCA Models

ASEAN

My article “Intergovernmental Yet Dynamically Expansive: Concordance Legalization as an Alternative Regional Trading Arrangement in ASEAN and Beyond” published in the European Journal of International Law conceptualizes the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) integration model, which I term ‘Concordance Legalization’. This is amid the regional trading arrangement landscape that holds two contrasting models epitomized by the European Union (EU) and the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). Concordance Legalization may offer sovereignty-centric states, especially those in the Global South, a ‘third way’ to regionalize dynamically whilst retaining intergovernmental preferences.

The Tragedy of AI Governance

Competition Law, International Law, Law & Technology

Despite hundreds of guides, frameworks, and principles intended to make artificial intelligence (AI) ‘ethical’ or ‘responsible’, ever more powerful applications continue to be released ever more quickly. Safety and security teams are being downsized or sidelined to bring AI products to market. And a significant portion of AI developers apparently believe there is a real risk that their work poses an existential threat to humanity.

Methodological Proposals for a Pluralist Institutional Approach to Constitutional Interpretation

Comparative Law, Public Law

What methodological implications should follow if we are to adopt a truly pluralist institutional approach to studying constitutional interpretation? This is the question we sought to address in our award-winning article ‘What would a pluralist institutional approach to constitutional interpretation look like? Some methodological implications’ published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON). In this article, we first advanced the argument that there is a need to take on a broader pluralist perspective when studying constitutional interpretation.

Shareholder Engagement in East Asia

Banking and Finance, Corporate Law

Little has been written in the legal literature about hedge fund activism in major East Asian markets. To fill this literature gap, my chapter entitled ‘Shareholder Engagement in East Asia’, forthcoming in Board-Shareholder Dialogue: Policy Debate, Legal Constraints and Best Practices (Luca Enriques and Giovanni Strampelli eds, Cambridge University Press), aims to take an empirical and comparative approach to examining hedge fund activism in the three major East Asian markets of mainland China, South Korea and Japan.

Data Protection Liability in the Employment Context

Data Protection

This blog post highlights my article ‘Employer Liability and the Employee Exemption’ published in the PDP Digest 2022 relating to the allocation of data protection liability in the employment context. In that article, I discuss how the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (‘PDPA’) allocates liability between an employer and an employee, when the employee does something that constitutes a breach of a data protection obligation under the PDPA (for example, where the employee discloses the personal data of an individual without having obtained prior consent from that individual, in breach of the Consent Obligation under section 13 of the PDPA).

Vaccination and Governing through Contagion

Law & Society

In a recent article ‘Smallpox Vaccination and the Limits of Governing through Contagion in the Straits Settlements, 1868-1926’ published in Law & Policy, my co-author Jack Jin Gary Lee and I examine the social regulation of contagious diseases and its impact through the case of smallpox vaccination, the first modern, systematic, state-driven attempt to build population immunity.

(Let’s) Playing by the Rules: A Choice of Law Rule for Copyright Infringement Disputes Involving Let’s Plays

Intellectual Property

Where material from video games is used in ‘Let’s Plays’ (livestreamed or pre-recorded playthroughs of video games) without authorisation from those holding copyright in it (referred to herein as ‘developers’), the court presiding over the infringement claim is faced with complex questions relating to the conflict of laws. In my article ‘(Let’s) Playing by the Rules: A Choice of Law Rule for Communication of Copyright Material from Video Games to the Public, through Let’s Plays’ published in the Computer Law & Security Review, I flesh out the difficulties a court presiding over such claims may encounter when tackling that issue. I also propose a choice of law rule it can use to defuse those difficulties.

Legislating for Site-Blocking Orders in New Zealand: Learning from Singapore and Beyond

Human Rights, Intellectual Property, Remedies,

In a paper shortly to be published in the New Zealand Universities Law Review, I argue that New Zealand (NZ) should adopt specific legislation granting courts the power to issue injunctions, known as “site-blocking orders”, against internet intermediaries. The relevant intermediaries are typically internet service providers (ISPs). Site-blocking orders require ISPs to block access to sites from which their subscribers can access unlicensed material protected by intellectual property (IP) rights.