Book Launch: Framing Intellectual Property Law in the 21st Century

The EW Barker Centre for Law & Business (EWBCLB) held a book launch on 17 January 2019 to celebrate the release of Framing Intellectual Property Law in the 21st Century: Integrating Incentives, Trade, Development, Culture, and Human Rights, by Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss and the late Associate Professor Elizabeth Ng Siew Kuan (former Deputy Chairwoman (EWBCLB), NUS Law)

The launch commenced with a welcome address by Professor Tan Cheng Han SC ’87 (Chairman, EWBCLB) and an introduction by Professor David Tan (Vice Dean (Academic Affairs), NUS Law and Director (Intellectual Property), EWBCLB). There was also a panel discussion with book contributors that included Professor David Tan, Associate Professor Albert Hu (Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, NUS) and Mr Mark Lim ’94 (Director (Hearings and Mediation), Intellectual Property Office of Singapore).

The event also marked the launch of the Elizabeth Ng Siew Kuan Prize.

The Book
As knowledge production has become a more salient part of the economy, intellectual property laws have expanded. From a backwater of specialists in patent, copyright, and trademark law, intellectual property has become linked to trade through successive international agreements, and appreciated as a key to both economic and cultural development. Furthermore, law has begun to engage the interest of economists, political theorists, and human rights advocates. But because each discipline sees intellectual property in its own way, legal scholarship and practice have diverged, and the debate over intellectual property law has become fragmented. This book is aimed at bringing this diverse scholarship and practice together. It examines intellectual property through successive lenses (incentive theory, trade, development, culture, and human rights) and ends with a discussion of whether and how these fragmented views can be reconciled and integrated.

Elizabeth Ng Siew Kuan Prize
The Elizabeth Ng Siew Kuan Prize in International Patent Law, Policy and Practice is an endowed prize that has been established with generous donations from friends, colleagues and former students of the late Associate Professor Elizabeth Ng Siew Kuan, who passed away in February 2018. The Prize will be awarded on an annual basis with effect from Academic Year 2019/20 to the law student(s) with the highest marks in the elective module International Patent Law, Policy and Practice. As International Patent Law, Policy and Practice is a course that Siew Kuan had set up herself and had previously taught (when it was called Global Exploitation of IP), this Prize will be an enduring legacy and a meaningful way to remember her. In AY 2019/20, the subject International Patent Law, Policy and Practice will be taught by Professor Andrew Christie from Melbourne Law School. Professor Christie will be visiting NUS Law as the Lionel A. Sheridan Visiting Professor; and he was previously the Kwa Geok Choo Distinguished Visitor.

More information about this book is available at Cambridge University Press