Oxford International IP Moot: NUS Law Wins “Best Written Submissions”

Congratulations to Amanda Lim ’17 and Joshua Chia ’18 for being awarded “Best Written Submissions” at the Oxford International Intellectual Property Moot 2017! This is the second year running that NUS had won this award. In addition, Amanda received a prize for being the 3rd Best Speaker during the Preliminary Rounds. Given the high quality of the mooters this year, this was by no means an easy feat. The team was coached by Associate Professor Eleanor Wong ’85, Felicia Tan & Mathias Goh ’13.

The moot took place from 16 – 18 March 2017, and was hosted in the halls of Pembroke College. While a record number of 59 written memorials were submitted this year, only 24 teams were invited for the oral rounds in Oxford on the strength of their written memorials. In the preliminary rounds, the NUS Law team was pit against Jindal Global Law School, University of Toronto, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and City University of London.

NUS Law was one of the top eight teams which had made it to the quarter-finals, and the only team on the South-East Asian bandwagon by this time. The team from the University of Oxford (“Oxford”) would be NUS Law’s opponent, and a coin toss placed the team on the side of the Respondent.

While the Oxford team put up a strong performance, it became quite clear that they had difficulties addressing the questions posed at them adequately. As first speaker, Joshua, who by this time was well in the swing of things, put forth his arguments forcefully and allowed his charm to fill the room. It reached a point where Joshua found himself engaged in a philosophical banter (“Are you a Benthamite then, counsel?”) with one of the judges! Amanda wasted no time in wrapping things up and delivered yet another solid performance.

Both teams delivered equally gutting rebuttals and surrebuttals, and it was a battle fought right down to the wire. Oxford eventually triumphed, and so NUS Law bowed out this year at the quarter-finals. QUT had likewise bowed out at the quarter-finals, and Oxford later at the semi-finals.

Bucerius Law School (“Bucerius”) faced the University of Toronto in the Grand Finals and both put up captivating performances, though Bucerius clearly showed itself to be the team which was more capable of engaging in banter with the judges. Bucerius would go on to later score their inaugural victory in the history of the Moot.