Compendium of Malaysian Intellectual Property Cases

They say one thing always lead to another.

It all started with a blog post entitled, “All Lawyers should have an iPad!” on LoyarBurok in 2011 which talks about the use of iPad by lawyers.

Immediately after posting that article, I was invited by the Bar Council to speak on the topic, “Use of Technology amongst Lawyers“.

Most of the participants of my talk were practitioners senior to me. However, Gaythri, the Head of Marketing of LexisNexis SEA (as then she was), a multinational legal information provider, attended too. She found out about my talk through Twitter.

After the talk, I was invited by Gaythri to review their upcoming LexisNexis iPad App which I gave input.

In early January 2012, LexisNexis sent me to Fukouka to attend the LexisNexis Customer Engagement Workshop at Fukouka. There I met Norainni, Associate Director of Product Development.

Before that, I started an eGroup on Google Groups called the Malaysian Intellectual Property and Information Technology Practitioner’s eGroup in 2009. I started the group with a purpose of sharing Court judgements relating to Intellectual Property and Information Technology. The eGroup grew and soon, many members started sharing judgements.

One day, in my effort of promoting my blawg, I thought of putting the these judgements online for people to download. I even thought of doing an eBook by compiling the judgements for download for free.

I guess my inspiration came from reading ancient case laws dating back to the early 1800s. A selection of oriental cases decided in the Supreme courts of the Straits’ Settlements by Robert Carr Woods Jr published in 1869 was one of my inspirations. The book was the first organised law report containing 12 cases decided between 1834 and 1869.

I was inspired by the words of James William Norton Kyshe in Cases heard and determined in Her Majesty’s Supreme Court of the Straits Settlements, 1808 – 1885. vol. i, p. i:-

“Upon a question on which the cases decided by the Superior Courts at home, cannot give much assistance, since its determination depends in great measure on local circumstances, I think it is to be regretted that the Recorders did not preserve their judgments by publishing them….. This absence of published judgments is, as I have just said, to be regretted, because much uncertainty will continue to hang over the Administration of Justice in the Settlement. Each Recorder must begin de novo, and solve for himself, as best he may, the question whether this or that Statute is in force here; and the law will fluctuate according as he unconsciously departs from the views of his predecessors, and as his views, again are, in similar unconsciousness, departed from by his successors.” Sir Benson Maxwell, Journal Indian, Archipelago, vol. iii., part i., p. 59

Few months ago, I met Norainni again few months later at a friend’s book launch. I told her about my book and I ended up with my first book deal.

My book, entitled “Compendium of Malaysian Intellectual Property Cases”, is a compilation of reported and unreported Malaysia intellectual property cases. In this book, I’ve prepared catchwords for each cases for easy reading. You do not need to read the entire case to get the important points.

The first volume of my book contains more than 70 trade mark cases. The cases have been divided into sections such as infringement, passing off, rectification and opposition.

If the sale of this book does well, LexisNexis may publish the other volumes which have other topics such as patents, copyright, industrial designs and confidential information.

I get a very small royalty from each book – not enough to sustain me when I retire. But making money is certainly not my priority. All I wanted is to leave an impact and legacy. I want this book to be around for hundred of years.

You can order my book at LexisNexis’ website! You can download an extract of the book here.

The LexisNexis Rule of Law Debate 2013

LexisNexis is organising a student debate at Le Meridian on 7 March 2013. If you remember last year, LexisNexis, an international legal information service provider, sent me to Fukuoka, Japan to attend the LexisNexis Customer Engagement Workshop.

The event will feature four teams in a British Parliamentary style debate. These teams are from Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia and the motion is:

“This House Believes That the ASEAN Declaration of Human Rights Is an Ineffective Safeguard of Human Rights”.

The debaters are students from the following institutions:

– International Islamic University Malaysia
– National University of Singapore
– University of Philippines Manila
– Universitas Indonesia

There will also be a panel forum discussion by Edmund Bon and Faisal Moideen, moderated by Syahredzan Johan on the topic “Do We Need An ASEAN Court of Human Rights”. Faisal and I were in the same panel for the forum discussion on s114A of the Evidence Act 1950.

The LexisNexis Rule of Law Debate 2013 will be streamed live on March 7th at 2.30pm (GMT+8)

For more information, please visit LexisNexis’ website.

Fukuoka, Japan – 2012 – Overview

They say one thing always lead to another.

It all started with a blog post entitled, “All Lawyers should have an iPad!” at LoyarBurok which talks about the use of iPad by lawyers. I wrote this post on one of the many nights that I couldn’t sleep.

Immediately after posting that article, I was invited by the Bar Council to speak on the topic, “Use of Technology amongst Lawyers“.

Most of the participants of my talk were practitioners senior to me. However, Gaythri, the Head of Marketing of LexisNexis SEA, a multinational legal information provider, attended too. She found out about my talk through Twitter.

After the talk, I was invited by Gaythri to review their upcoming LexisNexis iPad App which I gave input.

In early January, Gaythri invited me to attend the LexisNexis Customer Engagement Workshop at Fukouka. And at all expenses paid!

And weeks later, there I was, sitting in Business Class sipping champagne. Just one article led me to this. Amazing what the power of social media can do!


Business Class Seats – I could almost recline the seat 90 degrees.


Food


Awesome free stuff!

There were only five people (including me) invited by LexisNexis to attend this event namely a Managing Partner of an Indian law firm, a partner from a large Singaporean firm, a Chinese legal counsel of Foxconn (manufacturers of Apple products) and lastly a Japanese legal counsel from Lotte.

The event was held at Luigin Spa and Resorts, a hotel 40 minutes away from the city.

My room was spacious and it faced the sea.

Great view. Great service too.

The customer engagement session was great. Many ideas were discussed and exchanged. We had two sessions. In the first session, we had a panel discussion on how will legal profession be in the next ten years. The five of us gave our views to 50 over participants. My views were quite similar to what I presented in my “Use of Technology amongst Lawyers” talk. Briefly, they were:-

1. The new generation of young lawyers (namely the Gen Y) prefer flexibility over money. They no longer like 9 to 5 working hours. With this, mobility is important. The ability to work wherever and whenever are important in the future. Cloud computing and light weight and portable devices will be useful.

2. Touch screens, mobile devices and Apps are the way forward. Due to the need for mobility, documents will be in electronic form. I said that the use tablets and ultrabooks in legal practice will flourish. I also said that we may one day have paper thin touch screens and the Courts may use touch screen tables.

3. Apps will be developed to help legal practice. Currently, Dropbox, text convertors App and Penultimate (handwriting app) are useful.

4. I also said that thumbdrives will be one day as cheap as CDs. In the future, thumbdrives will be sold in bulk and people may even give thumbdrives as namecards (and also in the form of namecards) where their profile will be saved.

Before the presentation, the Indian lawyer told me that he goes to Court with three iPads and he doesn’t bring the physical file to Court. Each iPad would have all the relevant documents. If he needs to refer to two separate documents, he will use two iPads. Browsing and highlights are done through PDF reader Apps like GoodReader.

For thick documents, the Singaporean lawyer told me that she indexes her PDF files which will appear on the side of the document. These files will be indexed before e-filing them in Court.

5. Social media is the new marketing tool for lawyers and law firms. Many law firms have embraced social media to market their services. I gave an example of a UK law firm having their lawyers to have their own professional LinkedIn and Twitter account.

The second session was a breakout session. I was interviewed by the Malaysian LexisNexis team on various issues. I told them the story on how I ended up having a share in Nuffnang and also in Fukuoka.

The last session lasted until lunch time. We had lunch with the top management of LexisNexis including the South East Asia Head and Group CEO. It was a real privileged for a young practitioner like me to be there.

Due to the short trip, I didn’t have much time to visit Fukuoka. I did manage to visit the city and have some good food. Will talk about this later.

For my participation, LexisNexis presented me with a Kindle Fire. I can’t wait to download ebooks!

Many thanks again to LexisNexis for the opportunity!