COMMENT: Sad case of inventor caught in Mindef muddle
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.
