Academic Talk - The Importance of The Integrity Right To The Cultural And Artistic Development of A Country

Synopsis

While much scholarly attention has been focused on the scope and nature of economic rights and fair use under copyright law in Singapore, less consideration has been given to moral rights, which govern the relationship that the creator, as opposed to the copyright owner, has with his copyright work. Currently, Singapore only recognises the false attribution right, but does not currently provide explicitly for the attribution right (although this is proposed under recent copyright reforms) or the integrity right, which are rights provided under Art 6bis Berne Convention, to which Singapore is a signatory. The importance of moral rights to artists and to a country’s cultural environment cannot be overstated. The discussion will focus on the origins and development of moral rights and its relationship to copyright, the range of available rights recognised in different jurisdictions, with more specific attention paid to the integrity right, which is widely considered as the most important of moral rights. Underpinning the discussion will be an emphasis on the importance of the integrity right to a country’s cultural development and its artists. In particular, the scope and application of the integrity right or its equivalent in the US, UK, Australia and India will be examined, which will assist in informing the formulation of a similar right in Singapore in the future.

 

Speaker

Dr Tania Cheng-Davies is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol, UK, specialising in intellectual property law. Previously, she practised law in Singapore and taught on an LLM in IP programme at the UK Intellectual Property Office. Her PhD thesis focused on moral rights in the United Kingdom, which was supported by the prestigious Modern Law Review Scholarship. Parts of her thesis have been published in leading law journals such as the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and Intellectual Property Quarterly. Her recent article on the destruction of art works under copyright law was awarded the prestigious John McLaren Emmerson QC Prize by the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand. She has been awarded a research grant by the Society of Legal Scholars UK to conduct further research on moral rights, artists and culture in Singapore in 2020. Her other current research projects include an examination of Confucian and Erasmian perspectives of copyright and a study of music copyright/privileges in 17th and 18th century England. She can be contacted at University of Bristol, School of Law, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, BS8 1RJ, United Kingdom; email: tania.cheng-davies [at] bristol.ac.uk.

Chair

Kung-Chung LIU holds an LL.B. and LL.M. from National Taiwan University and a Doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian Universitaet (University of Munich). He was a Research Fellow at Academia Sinica, Taiwan until 2017. In 2003, he was a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow for the IP Academy of Singapore. Professor Liu has served as one of the founding Commissioners of the National Communications Commission in Taiwan between 2006 and 2007. In 2014-15, he was a Visiting Professor at the School of Law, Singapore Management University, and the Founding Director of the Applied Research Centre for Intellectual Assets and the Law in Asia (ARCIALA). In addition, he has been co-appointed Professor at the Renmin University, China (2017), and the Graduate Institute of Technology, Innovation & Intellectual Property Management, National Chengchi University, Taiwan (since 2010).
 

The event is by-invitation only.