On 17 January 2019, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) released the Singapore Copyright Review Report.

The Report makes 16 proposals, including that creators be granted ownership of commissioned works by default, unless otherwise agreed in writing (Proposal 2) and that creators be attributed credit whenever their works are used, even if the copyright has been sold (Proposal 4).

Of special interest to technology companies will be the new exception to facilitate use of copyright work for text and data mining (Proposal 8) which would enable legal use of large-scale AI and big data analytics on text, data and other content to generate insights.

If you have questions about how the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act will affect your business, please feel free to get in touch.

On 14 January 2019, Singapore’s Parliament passed the Payment Services Act, which regulates payment services & places regulatory oversight with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The Act comprises 2 regulatory frameworks.

The designation regime enables MAS to designate significant payment systems for financial stability and efficiency & competition reasons.

The licensing regime covers 7 types of services: account issuance, domestic money transfers, cross-border money transfers, merchant acquisition, e-money issuance, digital payment token dealing and exchanges, and money-changing. There will be 3 tiers of licences: money-changing licences, standard payment institutions which may provide services up to a specified transaction flow or e-money float threshold, and major payment institutions, who will be subject to more regulation due to the higher associated risk.

This will make Singapore one of the first financial services regulators in the world to introduce a regulatory framework for digital payment token services.