1. https://m.youtube.com › watch?v=Ib8BmWEj8NY
https://m.youtube.com › watch?v=Ib8BmWEj8NY
Inventor forced by Mindef to close company over patent rights
28 Feb 2023Facing a long-drawn and uphill legal arbitration with the Ministry of Defence over a patent issue, Dr Ting Choon Meng, an innovator and medical professional,...
2. COMMENT: Sad case of inventor caught in Mindef muddle
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/comment-sad-case-of-inventor-caught-in-mindef-muddle-023830017.html
P N Balji
25 January 2017
As the lawyers and online journalists involved in the Appeal Court’s verdict on Mindef celebrate, a Singaporean who is the heartbeat of the legal tussle was in a very different mood.
“I feel betrayed,” inventor and doctor Ting Choon Meng, 57, said as he looked back on his six-year legal battle over the patent of his invention, a safety vehicle to be used during military emergencies. In an emotional interview, he added, “I have lost all faith, trust in and respect for institutions.”
Ting’s fight with the Defence Ministry goes back to the surprise that awaited him at the National Day Parade in 2011, an annual event that is a proud moment for every citizen. Not for Ting. Actually, that was where his nightmare started: he saw what he claims was his invention taking pride of place in the march past.
To cut a long story short, an angry Dr Ting went to court for what he felt was an infringement of his patent. He gave up his fight half way because the legal bills kept mounting. “I can’t remember the exact amount but it’s around $200,000.”
Mindef maintained that it did not infringe any patent, since the patent was not valid in the first place. It also said that it is simply a buyer of the equipment, and that Ting should have taken up his dispute with the manufacturer. After Ting dropped the suit and also abandoned his defence to Mindef’s counterclaim that the patent was invalid, his patent was declared invalid and revoked by the High Court.
Part Two of the saga came four years later when in an interview with The Online Citizen he let fly at the ministry.
Both the website and Ting were taken to court over the resulting article under the Protection from Harassment Act (POHA), an anti-harassment law. The verdict hinged on a narrow definition of whether the Government could be considered a person under Section 15 of the Protection from Harassment Act after a protracted legal battle.
Two of the three judges on the Court of Appeal who heard the case said no and threw it out. What made it rare was that the Chief Justice gave a dissenting view from that of the other two judges.
Ting’s story seems to run counter to the country’s multi-billion dollar effort to turn Singapore into an innovation and business haven. “The irony of it all was that I was appointed to the board of IPOS (Intellectual Property Office of Singapore) six months before (the case) and the task was to transform Singapore into an IP hub.”
His experience does not seem to have struck a chord here. I did a quick and informal survey with 10 people who are very interested in what is happening in Singapore. Five have not heard of Dr Ting’s story.
But there may yet be another twist in the tale of David against Goliath, one that may affect online speech. On the very day of the verdict, the Law Ministry weighed in with a hint that POHA could be changed. One of Ting’s lawyers, Eugene Thuraisingam, said: “I expect the government to change the law.”
In response to the Workers’ Party urging authorities not to amend POHA, the Ministry of Law issued a statement on Monday (23 January) to clarify that the government “does not intend to amend POHA to protect itself from harassment”.
At the same time, it said that the case brought against Ting was not about harassment, but false statements. “The government needs to take steps to protect the public and Singapore’s institutions from the very real dangers posed by the spread of false information.”
If the government were to amend POHA or enact new laws, it cannot ignore one crucial point that the two Appeals Court judges made in their judgement, “…Mindef was anything but a helpless victim. It is a government agency possessed of significant resources and access to media channels.”
Let us see how Law Minister K. Shanmugam gets around this.
P N Balji is a veteran Singaporean journalist who was formerly chief editor of Today, as well as an editor at The New Paper, and currently a media consultant. The views expressed are his own.
3. < [2015]_SGHC_315
Ting Choon Meng v Attorney-General and another appeal [2015] SGHC 315
Case Number : Community Justice and Tribunals Appeals Nos 1 and 2 of 2015
Decision Date : 09 December 2015
Tribunal/Court : High Court
Coram : See Kee Oon JC
Counsel Name(s) : Choo Zheng Xi and Jason Lee (Peter Low LLC) for the appellant in CJTA 1; Eugene Thuraisingam and Suang Wijaya (Eugene Thuraisingam LLP) for the appellants in CJTA 2; Hui Choon Kuen and Lam Qian Yi Debra (Attorney-General'sChambers) for the respondent; Chen Jie'an Jared (WongPartnership LLP) asamicus curiae.
Parties : Ting Choon Meng - Attorney-General
Tort - Harassment - Protection from Harassment Act - False statements of fact
[LawNet Editorial Note: The appeals to this decision in Civil Appeals Nos 26 and 27 of 2016 were dismissed (by a 2:1 majority) by the Court of Appeal on 16 January 2017. See [2017] SGCA 6.]
9 December 2015 Judgment reserved.
See Kee Oon JC:
1 These were two appeals against the decision of the District Judge to grant the Attorney General an order under s 15 of the Protection from Harassment Act (Cap 256A, 2015 Rev Ed) ("the Act") in respect of certain allegedly false statements that had been made by Dr Ting Choon Meng ("DrTing"), the appellant in Community Justice and Tribunals Appeal No 1 of 2015 ("CJTA 1"), and published on a website called "The Online Citizen" by the appellants in Community Justice and Tribunals Appeal No 2 of 2015 ("CJTA 2"). The order which the District Judge granted was that those statements could not be published unless they were published together with a notification clarifying that the statements had "since been declared by the Singapore Courts to be false", and that the truth of the matter could be found in a separate statement published by the Ministry of Defence ("MINDEF").
2 Broadly speaking, the allegedly false statements concerned a patent dispute between Dr Ting's company MobileStats Technologies Pte Ltd ("MobileStats") and MINDEF. MobileStats had commenced an action in the High Court in 2011 alleging that MINDEF's purchase and use of a particular vehicle constituted an infringement of a patent that it owned. But MobileStats subsequently discontinued theaction in the midst of the trial, which resulted in the revocation of its patent on the ground ofinvalidity. Later, Dr Ting gave an interview to The Online Citizen in which he commented on thatpatent dispute, and the Attormey-General's position is that two false statements of fact emerged fromthe interview. The first was that MINDEF had knowingly infringed MobileStats's patent with the intention of applying subsequently to revoke that patent. The second was that MINDEF haddeliberately delayed the proceedings in the High Court as a "war of attrition" against MobileStats.
Factual background
3 Sometime in 2005, MobileStats successfully registered a patent known as Singapore Patent No 113446 ("the Patent"). The subject of the Patent was what was known as a "mobile first aid post", and this was essentially a vehicle designed to deliver medical services quickly and simply indisaster or combat situations or other emergencies. Sometime in 2009, following a tender exercise, MINDEF awarded a contract to a company called Syntech Engineers Pte Ltd ("Syntech") under which MINDEF agreed to purchase from Syntech a number of medical military vehicles known as "Battalion Casualty Stations".
4 On 29 July 2011, lawyers for MobileStats wrote to MINDEF demanding that MINDEF immediately cease the use of the Battalion Casualty Stations on the basis that these vehicles infringed the Patent. MINDEF replied several days later on 4 August 2011 explaining that it had done no more than purchase the vehicles from a vendor, namely Syntech, and that it had made this purchase on Syntech's contractual warranty that Syntech had obtained and/or would obtain all necessary intellectual property rights. MINDEF thus invited MobileStats to direct its complaints towards Syntech instead.
5 In the event, MobileStats opted to proceed against MINDEF. In September 2011, it filed Suit No 619 of 2011 ("Suit 619") in the High Court alleging that MINDEF had infringed the Patent. Although the Attormey-General was named as the defendant, the defence against MobileStats's action was conducted by Syntech. This arrangement accorded with the terms of the contract between MINDEF and Syntech: cl 40.2 provided that Syntech would indemnify MINDEF against all loss, damage or expense arising out of any claim for infringement of intellectual property rights in respect of the vehicles, and cl 40.4 provided that, in the event that a claim of that sort was made against MINDEF, Syntech would "conduct any litigation" in such a way that MINDEF would remain able to use the vehicles without interference. Syntech was not content merely to resist MobileStats's claim. It instituted a counterclaim alleging that the Patent was invalid and ought to be revoked.
6 The first two days of trial in Suit 619 took place on 2 and 3 July 2013, about 21 months after the commencement of the action. Further trial dates in January 2014 were subsequently taken, but the action did not reach that stage because MobileStats indicated on 3 January 2014 that did not intend to proceed further with Suit 619. As a consequence, on 15 January 2014, judgment was entered Syntech's counterclaim, and the Patent was held to be invalid and ordered to be revoked.
7 Almost a year later, on 30 December 2014, Dr Ting gave an interview to Mr Howard Lee, an editor of The Online Citizen and the first appellant in CJTA 2. This interview was recorded on video and edited into a presentation of 27 minutes' duration, and the final product was uploaded on TheOnline Citizen on 15 January 2015. The video was published together with an article by Mr Howard Lee entitled "Inventor forced by Mindef to close company over patent rights." In the video, Dr Ting was shown making the following comments:
(a) Sometime around 2005, Dr Ting had an encounter with the Army's (then) Chief Medical Officer, one Brigadier-General Dr Wong Yue Sie ("Dr Wong"), in which Dr Wong saw MobileStats's mobile first aid post, which was the subject of the Patent, and toldTing that he was "very interested to make for military". They subsequently exchanged e-mails, in the course of which Dr Wong acknowledged that the vehicle was "under patent" but indicated that he "wants to talk to Civil Defence first" and "to see how he can get around" the Patent. Thus, it was "already an intention from the start," infringe the Patent.
(b) After MobileStats had commenced legal proceedings in 2011, Dr Ting was informed that Syntech had written to MINDEF stating that Syntech had "checked with [its] legal adviser" and learnt that the Patent "has no novelty", meaning that it was possible to "revoke" the Patent in court. This showed that MINDEF was "waiting to be challenged" by MobileStats and had been planning all along, in a "very premeditated" way, to "do something like revocation".
(c) The lawyers opposing MobileStats in Suit 619 had said that they were conducting a "war of attrition" designed to bleed MobileStats "dry", and in this connection, it had taken nearly two years for the case to proceed to trial "because MINDEF has said that they could not locate and find an expert witness and they keep postponing".
(d) MINDEF's lawyers had "asked for a 10-day trial, not 5-day", and "10 day trial basically means that the actual costs would go up, would escalate"; MINDEF's intention was to "drag for10 days" as part of a "war of attrition" designed to render MobileStats "unable to financially fight" Suit 619.
MINDEF responded to Dr Ting's comments with a statement that was posted on its"Cyberpioneer" Facebook page. In this statement, MINDEF alluded to "online articles alleging that the mobile battalion casualty station bought by MINDEF had infringed [the Patent] for [MobileStat's] "Mobile First Aid Post", and to suggestions apparently made in those articles that "MINDEF is forcing MobileStats to close down, so as [sic] take over the patent rights". MINDEF said that "all these accusations are false and baseless", and proceeded to state, among other things, that (i) the High Court had ruled that the Patent was invalid, (ii) the patent dispute was in actuality one between MobileStats and Syntech, with MINDEF being nothing more than a "consumer", so that MobileStats's action against MINDEF was akin to Apple suing Samsung handphone users instead of Samsung Electronics for alleged infringement of Apple's intellectual property rights, and (iii) MINDEF could not have set out to destroy MobileStats through a "prolonged court case" since MINDEF had not initiated the court action.
9 MINDEF's statement was subsequently reported in a number of national newspapers. The statement was also reproduced in full by The Online Citizen in an article entitled "Mindef responds to allegations over patent rights". In addition, The Online Citizen provided a means of accessing MINDEF's statement directly from the webpage containing Mr Howard Lee's article and the accompanying video of Dr Ting's interview. That is to say, between the headline and byline of Mr Howard Lee's article was displayed the text "Update: MINDEF has issued a response via its cyberpioneer magazine facebook. (read here)" which contained a link to MINDEF's statement.
Proceedings under the Act before the District Judge
10 Before the District Judge, the Attorney-General took exception to the comments that Dr Ting had made in the video which The Online Citizen had published. To be precise, the Attorney-General considered that, from the four sets of comments made by Dr Ting that I have described above (at[7]), two false statements of fact about MINDEF could be derived or distilled. I should mention that the Attorney-General's position was made clear only at fairly advanced stage of the proceedings before the District Judge. The Attorney-General had initially put forward the following prayers in its originating summons:
1. The following italicized and put in bold statements of fact about the Ministry of Defence are declared to be false:
Group 1
(a) "[MobileStats] actually have encounter with the Chief Medical Officer of Army at the time...he actually saw our vehicle and he told us that he is very interested to make for military...we been exchanging email and then he said yes this is under patent but wants to talk to Civil Defence first. And then he want to see how he can get around it. This is his actual word to me that he'll 'try to get around it'. So I reminded him that this under, I mean it is patented in Singapore. Anyway nothing heard after that. That is at least about two years before we discover that the MINDEF has already made this. So that was already an intention from the start."
(b)...when [MobileStats] begin...the legal process...this letter came...and gist of whole letter is that the vendor [Syntech] is made aware and he knows that MINDEF is concerned that this may infringe our [MobileStats's] patent and herefore this letter was written to MINDEF telling him that we [Syntech] know your concerns but don't worry we have checked with our legal adviser. This patent has no novelty...This patent if are challenged can go to court to revoke basically. So what I [Dr Ting] am saying is this letter actually show you that not only they [MINDEF] want to make. Not only that they [MINDEF] know who owns the patent, they are not going to license the patent. And they are waiting to be challenged. They will do something like revocation. So it is a very premeditated."
Group 2
(c) "The word they [lawyers whom Dr Ting had spoken with] used is called 'a war ofattrition...basically they make you dry. Drag you dry... When we went ahead for the court case, it was only after two years, because MINDEF has said that they could not locate and find an expert witness and they keep postponing."
(d) ... MINDEF asked for, or the lawyers from MINDEF asked for a 10-day trial, not a 5-day...but they asked for a 10 day trial. 10 day trial basically means that the actual costs would up, would escalate... So this basically means that, they [MINDEF] also know, why they want to drag for 10 days, is a war of attrition. They basically drag us dry so we [MobileStats] are unable to financially fight them."
2. No person shall publish or continue to publish the statements mentioned in paragraph 1, unless that person publishes, together with the statements, the following notification:
"Statements herein which state and/or suggest to the reader that:
(i) MINDEF had knowingly infringed [the Patent], with the intent to subsequently apply to revoke [the Patent] upon [Dr Ting's] legal challenge; and
(ii) MINDEF waged a 'war of attrition' against MobileStats, by deliberately delaying the court proceedings in Suit 619 of 2011 and asking for more trial dates than necessary, thereby increasing legal costs, have since been declared the Singapore Courts to be false. For the truth of the matter, please refer to MINDEF's statement [as posted on its Facebook page]."
11 Framed in this manner, the Attorney-General's initial position appeared to be that there were altogether four statements of fact which it was alleging to be false, these statements corresponding to the four sets of Dr Ting's comments that I have set out at [7(a)]-[7(d)] above. It also appeared that the Attorney-General's position was that any alleged falsity was confined to the parts emphasised in bold italics. Subsequently, however, the Attorney-General applied to amend its originating summons to clarify that its case was that there were two false statements of fact, one derived from those of Dr Ting's comments that fell under the heading "Group 1" and the other derived from the comments under the heading "Group 2". These statements were, first, that MINDEF had"knowingly infringed" the Patent held by Dr Ting "with the intent to subsequently apply to revoke hispatent upon his legal challenge", and second, that MINDEF had "deliberately delayed the courtproceedings" in Suit 619 as a "war of attrition" against MobileStats.
12The District Judge allowed the Attorney-General's application to amend its originating summons.In response, counsel for Dr Ting sought permissionfile a further affidavit to address the amendedoriginating summons, but the District Judge declined to grant it. In my judgment, it would have beenmore prudentallow Dr Ting to file a further affidavit because the amendmentsthe AttorneyGeneral's originating summons seem to me to have altered the substance of its case. I grant that thealteration was by no means a radical one, but in the absence of any compelling reason to denypermission to file a further affidavitresponse, I incline to the view that such permission should havebeen granted.
13Fortunately, as will become apparent, I do not think that the outcome of the present appealsturns on this. In this judgment I therefore proceed on the premise that the Attorney-General'sposition is that there are two false statements of fact that are deriveddistilled from the four setsof comments made by Dr Ting in the video as set out at [7(a)]-[7(d)] above.
The law
14 The Attorney-General seeks relief under s 15 of the Act. The Act is a relatively new piece legislation, having come into force in November 2014. Its long title states that it is an Act "to protect persons against harassment and unlawful stalking and to create offences, and provide civil remedies related thereto or in relation to false statements of fact". The use the disjunctive "or" just before the reference to false statements of fact suggests that, even though the Act is named the "Protection from Harassment Act", harassment is not its sole concern. Rather, it is concerned also with false statements of fact whether or not such statements amount to harassment.
15 This view of the Act is supported by a consideration of its provisions. The word "harassment" is used in ss 3, 4 and 7 of the Act, and on those occasions the word is used within a larger phrase, which is "harassment, alarm or distress". These sections of the Act create offences that arepunishable by fine or imprisonment, and s 11 of the Act further provides that civil proceedings may be brought by the victim against the offender connection with the commission of these offences, andthe court may award damages to the victim in those proceedings. I describe these provisions briefly:
(a)Section 3 makes it an offence for a person to behave or communicate in a"threatening, abusive or insulting" way with the intention of causing, and actually causing, "harassment, alarm or distress" to a victim;
(b) Section 4 makes it an offence to behave or communicate in a "threatening, abusive or insulting" way towards a victim who is likely to be caused "harassment, alarm or distress"; and
(c) Section 7 makes "unlawful stalking" an offence, and defines this as engaging in a course conduct which involves acts.omissions associated with stalking and which causes "harassment,alarm or distress" to a victim, provided that there was an intentioncause such "harassment,alarm or distress" or at least knowledge that this was a likely outcome.
16 In contrast, the word "harassment" is absent entirely froms 15 of the Act. This provides that,where a false statement of fact about a person is published, the court may order, to the extent thatit would be "just and equitable" to do so, that the statement shall not be published unless the