Acting as an Expert Witness in an IP Dispute

Leslie is the founding and current Dean of the School of Law at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.  Leslie served as District Judge from 2007 to 2014.  He has practiced law in one form or another for over 4 decades.  He was appointed Senior Counsel in 2000.  Currently, he is a Senior Consultant at RHT Law Asia LLP and practices as counsel and arbitrator in international commercial disputes.

Mark is a Director and Chief Legal Counsel at IPOS (the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore), where he heads the Hearings & Mediation Department.

He has more than 25 years of experience in intellectual property law. Prior to joining IPOS in 2010, Mark was a lawyer in private practice for 15 years. His work encompasses all areas of intellectual property (“IP”) law. He also has experience in international arbitration proceedings.

Mark is regularly consulted on IP matters by various government agencies and invited to speak at both national and international IP conferences.

At IPOS International/ IP Academy (a wholly-owned subsidiary of IPOS), Mark oversees the development and curation of training programmes in the area of IP law for the legal community and IP professionals, as well as the public sector in Singapore.

Mark has published many articles in both local and international law journals. He is a co-author of the chapter on Copyright in Halsbury's Laws of Singapore: Volume 13(3) - Intellectual property (2007 & 2018 Reissue, Lexis-Nexis, Singapore).

Mark is an Adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. He is the Course Convenor for a pioneering course on the Arbitration of IP Disputes. He also co-teaches the module on Foundations of IP Law, where he covers the section on patents.

Siong Yoong builds businesses. He is one of the rare consultants with government, Fortune 500 and startup expertise.

He is the Founder and CEO of VALLARIS, the Strategic Confidence Company. He is an entrepreneur, a $1.5 billion deal advisor, and has advised the Singapore government on deals, as well as disputes as a Supreme Court expert witness.

Siong Yoong helps clients:

1. Understand the true worth of a business;

2. Identify financial risk;

3. Buy or sell the right business; and

4. Explain and stop financial crime.

In short, Siong Yoong delivers the strategic confidence leaders need to make their move.

He has done this in over 1,200 engagements.

His reports have been submitted to the Singapore Exchange, Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Singapore International Arbitration Centre, Supreme Court as well as Family Justice Courts of the Republic of Singapore.

He has advised government, private sector and not-for-profit Boards and Management internationally across Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, India, Greece, Netherlands and the United States of America.

Jason Chan is a founding director of Amica Law LLC and heads the dispute resolution practice group. His dominant area of practice is IP disputes and enforcement, including patent infringement and invalidity disputes. He also advises on telecommunications laws and agreements, IT, software, database rights and privacy, Internet and domain name disputes.

He has been in practice since 1992 and is a Singapore Registered Patent Agent. He has been regularly cited as a leading IP lawyer in various publications, such as Legal500, Managing IP, World IP Review and Chambers.

He was appointed an IP Adjudicator with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, Mediator for domain name disputes with Singapore Mediation Centre, Co-chairperson of the Anti-counterfeiting Committee of the Asian Patent Attorneys Association, and adjunct tutor for Practice Law Course conducted by Singapore Institute of Legal Education. He also sat on Law Ministry’s Committee to Review of Singapore’s IP Dispute Resolution Framework and was a contributing Author for the publication “Law and Practice of Commercial Litigation in Singapore” (Sweet & Maxwell 2015).

Tony Yeo is the Managing Director of Drew & Napier’s Intellectual Property department, and a Director in its Dispute Resolution department. He also heads the firm’s Healthcare & Life Sciences Practice. Tony has represented leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, and Becton Dickinson, government statutory boards such as Sentosa Development Corporation, and Health Promotion Board; as well as listed companies such as PT Bayan Resources Tbk and Manhattan Resources Ltd.

He is a litigator with an active court practice as an advocate and has acted as lead counsel in several complex matters, including numerous patent infringement cases. His forte is IP litigation and enforcement, including patent, trade mark, and copyright litigation. His civil and commercial litigation practice includes banking litigation and contract disputes.

Tony is recognised by several leading legal publications, including Chambers Asia-Pacific and The Asia Pacific Legal 500 as “a fantastic strategist and a great litigator". Clients have highlighted that one “can take comfort knowing that Tony is at the wheel when driving forward your litigation in unchartered legal landscapes."

He is highly commended for being “extremely hands-on, clear in his thinking, [having] foresight and [drawing] a lot of perspective from his past experience to evaluate the next steps.” Most recently, he was inducted into Legal 500’s inaugural Hall of Fame which recognises lawyers who are at the pinnacle of the profession.

Under his guidance and leadership, Drew & Napier clinched a double-win at the 2018 Asia IP Awards, walking away with both the Singapore Trade Mark Firm of the Year and the Singapore Patent Firm accolades.

Tony was appointed by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) as an IP Adjudicator to hear contentious IP matters. He is also the President of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) – Singapore Group.

Justice Valerie Thean has been a High Court Judge of the Supreme Court since 30 September 2017. She was first appointed Judicial Commissioner on 30 September 2014 (and concurrently, Presiding Judge of the Family Justice Courts from 1 October 2014 until 29 September 2017). She is at present one of the judges on the IP list at the General Division of the High Court.

Justice Thean obtained her law degree at Downing College, Cambridge University as a recipient of the President’s Scholarship, and holds a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School. Prior to joining the bench, Justice Thean was with the Singapore Legal Service, and has held various postings within the service, including as a Justices’ Law Clerk, Assistant Registrar at the Supreme Court, District Judge at the then Subordinate Courts, Senior State Counsel at the Attorney General’s Chambers, Director-General (Legal) and Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Law and Senior District Judge of the Family and Juvenile Justice Division of the State Courts. She was also previously an Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore Law Faculty.

After leaving practice as a commercial litigator, Esther has been in-house at Creative Technology Ltd for over 10 years. She oversees general Dispute Resolution and looks after the company’s Intellectual Property portfolio. This includes all registration, prosecution and maintenance work related to the company’s Intellectual Property portfolio. She is responsible for defence of the portfolio and brand protection, which often involves Trade Mark litigation, anti-counterfeiting strategies and licensing.

In recent years, she has spent more time focused on IP licensing and Patent Litigation in the US. She has managed lawsuits filed in District Court, at the International Trade Commission, and also cases which have been appealed to the Federal Circuit. Since most, if not all of these lawsuits involved technical issues, she has been involved in the selection of expert witnesses and has experience working with them.  

Having been involved in lawsuits as either Plaintiff or Defendant, she is familiar with the factors involved when on either side. Pre-pandemic, she travelled frequently to the US to work with US external counsel when preparing for these trials.

In addition to IP litigation, she also manages commercial lawsuits of varying sizes in Singapore and in other countries around the world, some of which have gone to trial, and some of which have been settled via negotiation or formal mediation.