David Tan Delivers Inaugural Professorial Lecture

Watch the video on YouTube.

Professor David Tan delivered his inaugural professorial lecture on 16 October 2019 to a full house at the Moot Court at the Bukit Timah Campus of NUS Law. Titled “Works, Marks and Personae: De(Re)Constructing Narratives in Intellectual Property Law”, the lecture suggests that objects of intellectual property (IP), in particular copyrighted works and trademarks, 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 the Lecture, Professor Tan explored 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 and trademarks via such textual signification may avail themselves of a number of defences under the current legal regimes.

Some distinguished guests at the Lecture included former Chief Justice Mr Chan Sek Keong ’61, former Judges of the Court of Appeal Mr Chao Hick Tin and Mr V K Rajah ’82, current Judge of the High Court Justice Vinodh Coomaraswamy, Deputy Attorney-General Mr Lionel Yee SC, and Chairman of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore Dr Stanley Lai SC.

In a lively and energetic hour, the audience were invited by Professor Tan to reflect on the coded narratives in the cars we drive and the handbags we buy, the values that are inherent in the representations of Disney princesses and Captain America, and perhaps more seriously, how lawyers and judges should react to such cultural meanings when arguing or evaluating legal defences like “fair use” in copyright law or “non-commercial purpose” in trade mark dilution claims.

The lecture will be published in the March 2020 issue of Law & Literature, a leading interdisciplinary peer-reviewed law journal directed to law and the arts, with a specific focus on critical theory and literary expression in its diverse media and forms.

About Professor David Tan

David Tan was promoted to full Professor with effect from 1 July 2018. David has established a reputation for himself as one of the leading scholars in the field of entertainment law, with his scholarship characterised by an interdisciplinary approach drawing on cultural studies and semiotics. Bridging intellectual property (especially copyright and trademarks) and privacy, this novel field ranges from the commercialisation of the celebrity persona to the protection of free speech. Among his achievements is his well-received book The Commercial Appropriation of Fame: A Cultural Analysis of the Right of Publicity and Passing Off, published by Cambridge University Press (hardback 2017; paperback 2018). David has published over 50 articles, comments, book chapters and review essays since joining NUS Law in December 2008.

He is also an outstanding educator. Having won the faculty-level teaching excellence award twice, David has chaired the Faculty Teaching Excellence Committee since 2015 and played a key role in supporting teaching excellence within the faculty. In this time, the quantity and quality of teaching seminars has increased, with many colleagues benefiting from rich discussion on teaching matters, in particular on forms of assessment and use of technology in the classroom.

In his capacity as Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, David has brought a strategic eye to NUS Law’s academic offerings, enhancing the compulsory modules while offering a rich and diverse array of electives, reviewing the class of honours policy for the LLB, and recruiting some leading visitors to NUS Law. He has led a review of our teaching excellence initiatives — including enhancing the faculty-level awards, developing our teaching seminars, and mentoring. In this last area, his leadership in the Sheridan Fellows programme has been a vital part of renewal at NUS Law, recruiting and developing the next generation of Singapore law scholars.

As Head (Intellectual Property) at the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business, he has launched a new Distinguished Visitor in IP Lecture Series with well-known names such as Professor Jane Ginsburg (Columbia) and Professor Barton Beebe (NYU), and an annual seminar series with the IP Academy. He was recently appointed Deputy Director of the newly established Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law, and will be convening the 8th Asian Privacy Scholars Network (APSN) Conference in Singapore in December 2019.

David holds PhD, LLB (First Class Honours) and BCom degrees from the University of Melbourne and an LLM from Harvard. He has been a regular visitor at Melbourne Law School and the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law teaching courses in intellectual property and popular culture.

At NUS Law, David pioneered courses in Entertainment Law, Freedom of Speech and Privacy & Data Protection Law. His areas of research cover personality rights, copyright, trademarks, freedom of expression, constitutional law and tort law, and his articles have been cited by the Court of Appeal and High Court in Singapore. His law publications have appeared in a wide range of journals that include Yale Journal of International Law, Harvard Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law, Law Quarterly Review, Sydney Law Review, Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, Singapore Academy of Law Journal, Media & Arts Law Review and International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. He is presently co-authoring the Intellectual Property Law section of SAL Annual Review of Singapore Cases with Professor Susanna Leong ’89.

Lastly, David is a well-known fine art and fashion photographer in Singapore, having contributed to magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Marie Claire. His advertising campaigns have appeared in Vanity Fair, Time and L’Officiel. He has had six solo photography exhibitions, which include collaborations with Cartier and Versace.