President’s Message

LES Singapore

President’s Message – for 2021 to 2022

Dear Members of LES Singapore,

LES International celebrates its 50th Anniversary this year – what a wonderful milestone! As the Singapore chapter of this amazing organization, we must build on the strong foundation that has been laid, and continue to work together to build a community which promotes innovation and collaboration through licensing.

I had travelled to Venice to attend the LESI Annual Conference 2022 and was hoping to include fresh insights gathered from this year’s meeting in my message to you, but alas, I am writing this note to you as I isolate in my hotel room after getting a positive result from a self-test done prior to starting the conference! The global pandemic continues to bring challenges for many but, as the saying goes, life must go on! Singapore’s lifting of restrictions and move to the current endemic phase would hopefully enable us to resume more in-person interactions and events, and we shall do so, starting with our Annual General Meeting at the end of May. For our LES Singapore members who attended this year’s Annual Conference, I trust that you found it fruitful and enriching and look forward to hearing about your experience!

We had in the past year kept up our efforts to organize events for our members, and the LES family has continued to seize the opportunity to offer greater value to our members around the world by opening up various on-line events and webinars to members of all LES chapters around the world. We also co-organized a joint webinar with the LESI Copyright Committee and LES Thailand on Copyright Clearance for Live Streaming, spearheaded by George Hwang, the co-Chair of the LESI Copyright Committee. I hope many of you have found these activities beneficial. Please continue to look out for events published on the LESI website, which you may enjoy from the comfort of your home (or office!) in Singapore.

One of my key goals this past year was to increase engagement among our members. While this continues to be a work-in-progress, I am delighted that we have set up the Singapore chapter of the LESI affinity group Women-In-Licensing Alliance (WILA), led by Ferzana Haq. Our WILA sub-committee also organized our inaugural International Women’s Day celebration with a webinar with our guest speaker, Ms Rachel Carrasco, a brand consultant and business owner. Please do reach out to Ferzana if you are interested in joining in this sub-committee.

Our Education sub-committee, led by LES Singapore Vice-President Sharon Chiang, co-organized our annual Basic and Intermediate Licensing Course (BLC/ILC) with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS). On behalf of the LES family, I offer a warm welcome to participants of the BLC/ILC 2021 who join us as members this year. I hope that you will find the offerings of the organization valuable and useful, whether in the course of your work or personal development. I would also like to record my heartfelt thanks to all the trainers, who have generously contributed their time and effort in order for us to continue to run this annual course.

In the past year, LES Singapore had the honour of being invited to host a session at the Singapore IP Week Global Forum on IP organized by IPOS. We conducted a mock negotiation session entitled “At the Negotiation Table: The Art of Successful IP Licensing”. This event showcased various issues that arise in the course of negotiating an IP licence and some of the possible solutions. It was a good opportunity for us to introduce LES and the work of this society to participants of this prestigious event. A big thank you to the team of LES members who worked hard on the presentation!

We have also had the opportunity to collaborate with our valued partners in the IP space and held the following joint webinars:

• Joint Webinar by LES Singapore and Anaqua: Securing a Competitive Edge in IP Licensing
  We were privileged to have a panel of stellar speakers for this webinar, including Suresh Sachi, Deputy Chief Executive and General Counsel of A*STAR, Sandeep Agarwal, Vice-President Acquisitions Xperi Corporation, Tom Major, Vice-President TransactionsIP and Shayne Phillips, Director of Analytics Solutions at Anaqua. The wealth of experience among the panel, many of whom are recognized leading global IP Strategists, was evident as they shared best practices and tips on identifying potential high value IP and organizing development efforts.
• Joint Webinar by LES Singapore and IPWe: NFTs: What is it all about and why is this relevant to my business?
  This webinar held together with IPWe gave greater insight into the world of non-fungible tokens. It was an enlightening session by the team from IPWe and IBM who shared their thoughts on how they see NFTs being adopted across more industries, including IP.
• Joint Webinar by LES Singapore and Library Association of Singapore: Amendments to Singapore Copyright Laws
  George Hwang, co-Chair of the LESI Copyright Committee, conducted this session for LES members as well as the Library Association of Singapore to highlight some of the key recent amendments to the Singapore Copyright laws. It was a timely and engaging session presented by one of our own experts in the field.

I hope many of you managed to attend these webinars and learnt something new. If you have any particular topic you would like to hear more on, or have any ideas for future activities, please do feel free to let me know. LES Singapore is your society, so I encourage you to get engaged so that you can extract the most value from your membership and make some good friends along the way. For our younger members (or the young at heart!), please consider joining our very vibrant Young Members Congress (YMC) sub-committee led by Tim Ang.

To round up, I wish to express my sincere thanks to my fellow Executive Committee members for all their hard work and support in the past year. I am glad that we can finally hold our Annual General Meeting in person this year, and am very much looking forward to meeting each of you very soon!

Yours faithfully,
Catherine Lee
President, LES Singapore