SLATE VI (Seminars on LAw and TEchnology series) on 19 September 2024 was presented by Professor Kelvin Low, the leading expert on cryptocurrency and virtual assets. Prof Low started by describing the paper that is the subject of the talk, "Data Objects: New Things or No-Thing More than Ignis Fatuus", stemmed from the misapprehension amongst lawyers regarding the way technology works with regards to information in digital form, which the paper terms "data objects".

On 22 August 2024, as a prelude to the Global Forum on Intellectual Property (GFIP) that will be held at Marina Bay Sands the following week, the Singapore Academy of Law and TRAIL partnered to organise a seminar that brought together practitioners, policymakers and academia to discuss some of the salient challenges facing copyright law brought about by the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI).

Professor David Tan’s paper in the Yale Journal of International Law in 2000 called for the outer-space environment to be protected from pollution through the adoption of a Framework Convention on the Protection of the Space Environment and the establishment of an International Space Agency. Nearly 25 years later, such proposals for better international regulatory oversight have yet to be realised.

Two research centres at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law (NUS Law), join forces with McGill University’s Institute for Air and Space Law to co-organise a two-day conference on emerging legal and policy issues around air and space navigation from 1-2 August 2024.

In the third session of the four-part Developments in IP Law series on 22 February 2024, legal practitioners and policymakers gathered at the Suntec City Convention Centre for an update on regulations and judicial decisions relevant to Breach of Confidence/Privacy & Data Protection. The series is jointly organised by IPOS and the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business at NUS Law.

The popular Developments in IP Law series moves past its first decade milestone on 23 January 2024 as the 11th edition features a roundup of copyright decisions in 2023. The EW Barker Centre for Law & Business (EWBCLB) at NUS Law continues its partnership with IPOS International for this marquee event at the Suntec City Convention Centre.

TRAIL is pleased to present its fourth edition of the TRAIL Year In Review, which is its annual report of the kaleidoscope of activities and publications in 2023. Stable Diffusion has been used, with retouching in Adobe Photoshop, to create its unique cover that depicts the iconic Marina Bay Sands building with four pillars signifying the fourth issue of TRAIL’s report.

Professor David Tan represented TRAIL at a panel discussion at the Singapore Pavilion of the Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF) on 7 December 2023 comprising industry leaders and entrepreneurs. The ATF is a significant trade fair event focusing on the entertainment industry in Asia and is held annually at the Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre in Singapore.

In SLATE V (Seminars on LAw and TEchnology series) on 22 November 2023, Professor David Tan discusses whether existing copyright doctrines can adequately address the issues arise from the generative AI applications such as ChatGPT, DALL·E and Stable Diffusion and to what extent the Singapore Copyright Act 2021 is equipped to deal with these challenges. The seminar covers: (i) copyright infringement in both the input of works to train generative AI and the AI output in response to human prompts and commands; (ii) how the computational data analysis exception and open-ended fair use provision are likely to apply to these scenarios.

On 13 September 2023, TRAIL and AI Singapore jointly hosted Professor Anu Bradford’s lunchtime talk on her new book titled Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, published by Oxford University Press, at the NUS Kent Ridge Campus. Professor Bradford outlined the strengths and limitations of three regulatory models adopted by the United States, Europe and the People’s Republic of China, and framed the debate as a battle between techno-democracies and techno-autocracies.

On 15 May 2023, Professor David Tan, Co-Director of TRAIL, joined an illustrious panel of practitioners to discuss how the metaverse hype has affected the development of trademark laws, including registration, infringement and dilution.

On 14 March 2023, the Centre for Legal Innovation and Digital Society (CLINDS) Faculty of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), partnered TRAIL in organising the Metaverse Law Conference at its Graduate Law Centre on the second floor of the Bank of America Tower in Hong Kong. The conference examined emerging issues associated with the metaverse in different fields of law, that included contract law, property law, intellectual property, data protection, consumer protection and financial law.