In August 2025, two research centres from the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore – the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law (“TRAIL”) and the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business – partnered with research centres from Columbia, Oxford and Tsinghua to co‑organise a truly transnational two‑day conference marking the first‑ever academic collaboration of its kind across these leading global institutions. Titled “Intellectual Property and Technology in the 21st Century: Challenges in the Next Decade”, the conference discussed how intellectual property (“IP”) laws can better deal with disruptive technology trends. The conference was also supported by partners such as Google, ByteDance, the Singapore Academy of Law and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (“IPOS”).

One of the biggest lessons I learnt in law school was that the law never happens in a vacuum, and in these times of geopolitical tension, economic uncertainty, societal stress and technological acceleration, context matters more than ever. Therefore, I hope in this keynote to provide some context to the discussions that will take place over the next two days.

This Article argues that the United States’ fragmented approach to generative AI regulation is a strategic strength rather than a flaw. In place of a single federal regime, privacy law, the right of publicity, and copyright offer overlapping tools to address identity-linked harms, each grounded in distinct theories of harm and institutional traditions. This pluralism promotes experimentation, learning, and well-reasoned development rather than confusion. Heterogeneous governance helps courts and lawmakers adapt incrementally to fast-moving technologies, avoid premature lock-in, and coordinate protections across legal silos. To build on these advantages, the Article proposes a narrowly tailored data right focused on high-fidelity, identity-linked uses of data. Functioning as an opt-in, transparency-driven supplement to existing doctrines, this right would close gaps while preserving innovation and doctrinal diversity. The result is a principled, pragmatic approach that safeguards individual agency and leverages the adaptive strengths of US federalism.

The advent of sophisticated AI-driven voice cloning has brought to the fore critical legal and ethical challenges regarding the protection of vocal identity. Prompted by recent controversies – including the striking resemblance between OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o voice and that of Scarlett Johansson – this article examines how generative AI technologies undermine the unique value of the human voice and further complicate the legal questions surrounding personal identity. Through a comparative analysis, the paper evaluates three principal legal frameworks: the right of publicity, personality rights, and the personal data protection right. Each framework – rooted in different legal traditions – offers distinct strengths and limitations in addressing the threats posed by AI-generated voice cloning. By analysing these doctrines’ scope, remedies, and posthumous protections, the study offers a foundation for understanding how existing legal approaches may be applied to the evolving challenges of vocal identity in the era of generative AI.

Prompt-based AI creativity is redefining how expressive works are produced, posing novel challenges for copyright law. This article identifies three major obstacles standing in the way of AI copyrightability. First, the lack of meaningful human control in prompt-based AI creation undercuts the traditional requirement of human authorship. The cross-categorical nature of generative AI outputs also exposes a fundamental mismatch with copyright’s theoretical design. Second, recognising copyright in machine-created outputs risks creating unjustified windfalls for users who claim authorship without true creative contribution, undermining copyright’s incentive structure. Third, protecting AI outputs under copyright without distinction has broader creative and social consequences, including cognitive offloading, reduced authenticity, and stagnation in artistic diversity, which could erode the value of human creativity. This article recommends that future regulation preserve human-centred authorship in copyright law, implement transparency mechanisms for AI-assisted creations, and avoid overextending copyright in ways that erode the value of human creativity.

This article examines whether trade secrets law should be applied to protect “semi-public” databases with frontend data access that is open to the public. It argues that the incentive-based justification, whether grounded in the traditional rationale or reframed through an investment lens, does not provide a compelling basis for extending protection. The business efficiency rationale may arguably support trade secrets protection only where frontend access is restricted to a clearly defined and limited group of users. By contrast, when access is open to an indefinite public, ambiguous legal standards fail to mitigate inefficiencies and may even intensify the technological arms race between data holders and scrapers. Although deterrence could theoretically yield efficiency benefits, such an effect rests on a flawed assumption and risks suppressing activities that serve the public interest. Moreover, given the powerful and arguably overprotective alternatives already available to database holders, introducing trade secrets protection in this context risks further distorting the balance between private and public interests.

Although Singapore has legalised sports betting since 1999 and the sector involves billions of dollars, it lacks specific legislation regulating the misuse of inside information in sports betting, one of the two most common forms of match manipulation observed internationally and a recognised money laundering risk. This regulatory gap could be exploited, especially as developments in other jurisdictions reveal emerging legal and policy challenges that Singapore’s existing anti-corruption laws cannot fully address. These implications remain unexamined in the Singapore context and this article seeks to fill that gap by examining these challenges, identifying existing regulatory approaches, and proposing a Hybrid Information-Connected Approach, inspired by Singapore’s financial insider trading laws, for Singapore to consider adopting. By identifying and defining this hybrid approach, this article aims to contribute a framework for future regulatory development in sports betting and support Singapore’s efforts to uphold sports integrity and strengthen its anti-money laundering regime.

If a contracting party cannot pay in US dollars, can they pay the equivalent in Euros? Set against the backdrop of force majeure, the conclusion reached by the UK Supreme Court in RTI Ltd v MUR Shipping BV was, perhaps surprisingly, no. The court held that reasonable endeavours provisos in force majeure clauses can never require a party to accept non-contractual performance (ie, performance on different terms from the contract). This comment has two aims. First, it explains why the holding should be reconsidered, and in so doing sets out a preferable approach to interpreting reasonable endeavours provisos in force majeure clauses. Second, it makes suggestions on the approach to interpreting force majeure clauses more generally. In this regard, references and observations will also be made on the position in Singapore.

In Hui Chun Ping v Hui Kau Mo (2024) 27 HKCFAR 634, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal considered whether an agent who acquired a secret profit in breach of fiduciary duty could raise a limitation defence. Lord Hoffmann NPJ decided that the claim against the agent did not fall within s 20(1)(b) of the Limitation Ordinance and was subject to a limitation period. This Note makes two comments on his reasoning. First, it argues that Lord Hoffmann’s recourse to the historical roots of the limitation statute should be commended, even if his articulation of it was not without its shortcomings. Second, it critiques Lord Hoffmann’s unsatisfactorily equivocal answer to whether the limitation period arose by analogy or directly under s 20(2) of the Limitation Ordinance. It suggests that it would have been desirable for him to clarify that the limitation period in Hui arose by analogy only.

On 8 February 2025, the Singapore Parliament enacted the Workplace Fairness Act 2025, which is the first legal framework against workplace discrimination in Singapore. This comment builds on existing scholarship by focusing on the social implications that might result from three legal characteristics of the WFA: (a) the lack of provisions against conduct that would amount to indirect discrimination in other jurisdictions; (b) that sexual orientation and gender identity are not listed as protected characteristics; and (c) the explicit legalisation of discrimination against relatives and associates. Overall, I argue that while the WFA is a valuable addition to the employment law regime in Singapore, the law needs to be more sensitive to the socio-political consequences that could result from its legal operation.