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12 April 2006
NUS creates waves at international IP mooting competition
First-time contender beats leading universities to win Oxford
International Intellectual Property Mooting Competition
The National University of Singapore (NUS) swept aside stiff competition
from home team Oxford University and other internationally renowned
institutions to take top honours at the recently concluded 4th Annual
International Inter-University Intellectual Property (IP) Mooting
Competition, held at Oxford University’s Oriel College from 1 to 2 April
2006.
Represented by law students Suegene Ang and Felicia Tan, the NUS team was
pleasantly surprised by their win as it was the first time that the
University was participating in this highly prestigious competition.
Accompanying the team was their coach, Associate Professor Eleanor Wong,
Director of the Legal Writing Programme at NUS. Associate Professor Wong
said, “The win was particularly sweet as the team had met Oxford in one of
the preliminary rounds but had narrowly lost that round, as they were still
finding their feet with a relatively new format and different expectations
of the judging panels.”
Associate Professor Wong is also a former mooter and a member of the 1985
NUS Law team that won the prestigious Philip C Jessup International Law Moot
Court Competition in the United States.
Organised by the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC) and
London’s Intellectual Property Institute, the Oxford International
Intellectual Property Mooting Competition fielded 21 teams including top
English universities like Cambridge University, as well as other teams from
Hong Kong, Ireland, Sri Lanka and the Ukraine.
NUS beat the University College of London (UCL) to reach the finals, while
Oxford beat Cambridge. NUS also had to face Brunel University in the
preliminary round and the University College Dublin in the quarter-finals
and each time, they impressed the judges and audience with their mastery of
the facts and law, their no-notes delivery and good handling of questions.
The finals between NUS and Oxford took place before a brilliant bench
consisting of Lord Justices Jacobs and Mummery and Mr Justice Pumfrey.
Fortified by prep sessions before NUS’ own mooting alumni, the Singapore
team exchanged witty repartee with the judges, while getting their case out,
answering questions succinctly and never wavering from their position.
The team was privileged to have the opportunity to test their arguments
before practice panels that ranged from the NUS IP faculty of Associate
Professor Ng-Loy Wee Loon and Assistant Professor Burton Ong, to former
mooters now practising IP law at Rajah & Tann and Alban Tay Mahtani & de
Silva.
Many of the leading lawyers in Singapore were members of the NUS Moot
teams when they were law students. They include judges of the Supreme Court
of Singapore Justice Woo Bih Li from Class of '77, Justice VK Rajah from
Class of ’82 and Justice Sunderesh Menon from Class of ’86, as well as
Members of Parliament and Senior Counsels Indranee Rajah from Class of ’86
and K Shanmugam from Class of ’84.
The NUS team’s participation in this competition was sponsored by the
Singapore IP Academy.
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