11
February
2021
|
08:09
Asia/Singapore

NUS Law students shine at Intellectual Property Moot

NUS Law students scored a clean sweep of the top four places in an intense competition this year.

Held on 19 Jan, the CMS Intellectual Property Moot 2021 saw strong participation of around 60 participants. The winning students comprising the champion Benson Fan, first runner-up Shannen Leong, and second runners-up Tan Wei Sze and Audity Tareq delivered a stellar performance at the final round of the competition.

The CMS Intellectual Property Moot features fictitious trademark cases that give valuable opportunities to students to understand trademark opposition proceedings. Participants are also given the chance to refine their written and oral advocacy skills in an appellate advocacy context.

The competition aims to expose students to various areas of Intellectual Property (IP) law and enjoys strong support from CMS Singapore and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS). Currently, this is the only IP moot in Singapore.

This year, in the final round of competition, the students had to look into fascinating and emerging areas of copyright laws in face of cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence. Their success is the culmination of early and intensive preparation work where they had to research and get a good grasp of the challenging areas surrounding intellectual property laws.

Benson shared, “For instance, we had to deal with the issue of whether a machine learning software can be an author of a literary work, so that was pretty cool! We had to read academic articles about how the law should handle such new situations. It was definitely not your run-off-the-mill kind of situation where courts are able to decide easily. We have to delve through the legal principles behind and construct a new path forward for the courts to take.”

Shannen added, “I'm extremely grateful to have had this experience, as the CMS Intellectual Property Moot has been my first exposure to intellectual property law. Taking part in this moot has shown me how diverse and interesting intellectual property law is, as it constantly has to keep abreast with the advancement of technology and our ever-changing society.”