This Paper considers two fields of trade mark law which have expanded in recent years. Unconventional trade marks involving sounds, smells and shapes have started appearing on trade mark registries in Europe and the United States. The owners of well-known marks like Coca-Cola, which has long been firmly protected against imitators and "free riders", have also not been content with the protection they receive under national laws and have managed apparently to secure even more advantages from national legislatures and internal fora. The United States - Singapore Free Trade Agreement of 2003 compelled Singapore to strengthen its trade mark laws to encompass these developments. This paper examines unconventional and well-known marks from a comparative, primarily European law, perspective. It argues that the expanded protection accorded to these marks is not self-evidently a good thing in public policy terms. It concludes that re-forming the law is not the same as reforming it.

One of the tricky issues that has arisen rather frequently in recent years concerns attempts by intellectual property right owners to expand their rights and remedies so as to cover activities which are said to have been caused by the infringement but which lie downstream of the actual infringement. Are such activities within the scope of the exclusive rights conferred so as to enable the right owner to sue the individual carrying out the downstream activity? Alternatively, might the right owner litigate against the immediate infringer on the basis that his infringement was the "cause" of the downstream activity such as to support a claim for damages in respect of the downstream losses? This article starts with a brief discussion of the reach of process patents into downstream products and then moves into a detailed discussion of the position at common law under the action to protect confidential information.

Discovery before action is a relatively recent development in Singapore and other common law countries and is now well established. However, case law has yet to determine whether a party to an arbitration agreement is entitled to discovery prior to arbitration. This issue raises various questions concerning the nature of arbitration legislation and the Rules of Court, and the extent of the court's inherent powers.

This article outlines the problems attendant on the conclusion of contracts intended to be performed by a company, though entered into by a promoter or interested party before the company's formation. Such pre-incorporation contracts, widely used as a vehicle for obliging co-contractants, are nonetheless not without difficulties, notably in cases where liability for performance or non-performance is at issue. It is the purpose of this article to take a comparative view of how these questions have been dealt with in a number of Commonwealth countries, including the United Kingdom, as well as Europe, where the company law harmonisation initiative has attempted to create a unique rule to apply to both common law and civil law jurisdictions.

This paper outlines recent milestones in Malaysia's efforts to raise the standards of corporate governance and directors' duties. Much has been achieved concerning the regulation of listed companies. This can be attributed in lager part to the overhaul of the Listing Requirements of the Burs Malaysia Securities Bhd, which occurred in 2001 as a response to recommendations of the High Level Finance Committee. The next challenge involves the reformulation of core provisions of the Companies Act 1965 regulating directors' duties and related party transactions. This reform task is currently in the hands of the newly constituted Corporate Law Reform Committee.

This article is concerned with the remedies available for delay in the performance of contractual obligations, and in particular with the proper analysis of the question whether time is of the essence. The law in this area is both difficult and complex, not only with regard to whether is of the essence in any given case, but also with regard to what this entails. It is argued that many of the difficulties arise from the ambiguous and inconsistent way in which the courts have approached the question whether time is of the essence, the concept being used in several distinct, albeit related, sensed. The article seeks to demonstrate that the law relating to the topic is unnecessarily complicated, and to suggest ways in which it might be simplified.

The recent enforcement action taken by the Monetary Authority of Singapore ("MAS") against three employees of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation ("GIC") is the first publicized case in Singapore involving cross border insider trading under the Securities and Futures Act. The present article looks at the impact of the new insider trading provisions on enforcement across borders, and more substantially, the apparent Singapore legal position on corporate liability for insider trading by corporate agents. While the three GIC employees were made to pay civil penalties, the MAS took the position that GIC itself was not liable because its senior executives were unaware of the transactions. One implication is that a corporation is legally entitled to keep the fruits of its agents' unlawful activity. Such a result was, fortunately, avoided in the GIC case by the corporation volunteering to turn over its gains to the MAS. The author argues that a more purposive and holistic reading of the statutory provisions permits a wider interpretation, one that would result in a more coherent law on insider trading. Even if the narrow position is the right one to adopt, the untenable consequence prompts legislative amendments to reverse the position. The author argues first for necessary clarification in the law on corporate liability for insider trading. Second, he argues for rules to conduce corporations toward taking robust safeguards against insider trading by its employees. Third, he argues for a distinct rule to deprive corporations of the fruits of unlawful activity, this notwithstanding the fact that the employee was on a frolic of his won and that the corporation is not blameworthy.