SINGAPORE Law and Practice Contributed by: Yvonne Tang, Lim Siau Wen and Ruby Tham, Drew & Napier LLC
the original broadcast (see Section 129(3) of the Copyright Act). For a cable programme, it must not be a broadcast that has been received and immediately re-transmitted via the cable net - work (see Section 130(2)(a) of the Copyright Act). 3.3 Copyright Authorship Authorship The Copyright Act does not define “author” or “authorship”. The Court of Appeal in Asia Pacific Publishing Pte Ltd v Pioneers & Leaders (Pub - lishers) Pte Ltd [2011] 4 SLR 381 held that only natural persons could be considered an author in copyright law, and a corporate body was not so entitled. For a natural person to qualify as an author, they must have contributed the relevant types of mental labour, skill or judgement which can confer originality to the authorial work. Section 166 of the Copyright Act provides a rebuttable presumption as to authorship, in situations where a name purporting to be that of the author (or a joint author) of an authorial work appears on a published copy of the work, or where a name purporting to be that of the author (or a joint author) of the work appears on an artistic work when it is made, and the name is a person’s true name or a name by which a person is commonly known. A “work made for hire” is not a term used in the context of Singapore copyright laws. In cases where copyright work is created under commissioning contracts or employment, the author remains the natural person who created the work. Under Section 133(1)(a) of the Copy - right Act, the author is the first copyright owner of an authorial work. This applies to commis - sioned works where the commissioning contract is made on or after the date of commencement of the current Act. The Copyright Act does not define “commissioned work”.
Based on the position that authorship is limited to human authorship, it would appear that a person cannot claim authorship of an authorial work not created by a human/created without the intervention of, or direction by, any human. Joint Authorship Section 10 of the Copyright Act provides that an authorial work is a “work of joint authorship” if it is produced by the collaboration of two or more authors, and the contributions of the authors are not separate. Assuming that the joint authors are the joint owners, the same rights are afforded to each of the joint owners (see 3.4 Copyright Rights ), assuming that they are each a qualified individ - ual. Section 146(1) of the Copyright Act provides that, subject to the provisions of the Act, copy - right is infringed if a person does in Singapore, or authorises the doing of in Singapore, any act comprised in the copyright, and the person nei - ther owns the copyright nor has the licence of the copyright owner. Section 100 of the Copy - right Act provides that an act comprised in a copyright is any act that, under this Act, the owner of the copyright has the exclusive right to do. In Ng-Loy Wee Loon, Law of Intellectual Property of Singapore (3rd edition, 2021, Sweet & Maxwell) at [10.1.1], footnote 1, it is stated that “[t]he reference to the person not being the copyright owner has significance in cases where the copyright is jointly owned by X and another person(s): since X is one of the copyright own - ers, he cannot be liable for copyright infringe - ment even if he does the act without the consent of the other joint owner(s)”. The extent to which each author can indepen - dently exploit the copyrighted work, and the ownership percentage, would depend on the facts. Joint authors usually own the copyright
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