Singapore Land Authority v Virtual Map (Singapore) Pte Ltd

• Judge: Thian Yee Sze
• Judgment Date: 06 August 2007
• Neutral Citation: [2007] SGDC 216
• Citation: [2007] SGDC 216
• Docket Number: District Court Suit No 3535 of 2005
• Published date: 06 May 2017
• Hearing Date: 09 January 2007,10 January 2007,12 January 2007,06 August 2007,02 March 2007,01 August 2007,11 January 2007,08 January 2007,23 February 2007
• Plaintiff Counsel: Dedar Singh Gill and Yvonne Tang (Drew & Napier LLC)
• Defendant Counsel: Low Chai Chong, Mark Seah and Alvin Lim (Rodyk & Davidson)
• Court: District Court (Singapore)

District Judge Thian Yee Sze:

Copyright – as its name suggests – is the right to make a copy of a work and, by implication, to stop others doing so. The law of copyright rests on a very clear principle: that anyone who by his or her own skill and labour creates an original work of whatever character shall, for a limited period prescribed by the Copyright Act (Cap 63) (“the Act”), enjoy the exclusive right to copy that work. As Lord Bingham put it, “(n)o one else may for a season reap what the copyright owner has sown.”¹ The question posed to me in this action was precisely that – whether the defendant had availed for itself the results of what the plaintiff had sown by virtue of the latter’s hard work, skill, knowledge and judgment, without permission and in breach of the plaintiff’s copyright.

The plaintiff (“SLA”) was established on 1 June 2001 and is a body corporate which merged four government departments – the Singapore Land Registry, the Land Office, the Survey Department and the Land Systems Support Unit.² Among the services which SLA provides are land survey services and land information services, including the production and publication of the Singapore Street Directory with which many road users will be familiar.

The defendant (“VM”) was incorporated in 1999 and develops and publishes location-based software and systems. One of VM’s most popular services is the online maps and related services (including the provision of driving instructions, public transport guide, “jogging calculator”, “sms-a-map” and a dynamic search engine) found on its websites, www.streetdirectory.com and www.streetdirectory.com.sg.

These online maps form the subject-matter of the dispute between parties. In essence, SLA contended that VM infringed its copyright in the following works (“the works”) under sections 31 and 33 of the Act by virtue of the fact that VM’s online maps are reproductions of SLA’s said works: the maps in the Singapore Street Directory, 1st Edition (1954) till the Singapore Street Directory, 21st Edition (2002/2003) (“Singapore Street Directory”) the street directory data of Singapore in vector format (“street directory vector data”) the address point data of Singapore in vector format (“address point vector data”)

To place the dispute in its proper context, it would be opportune to set out the business relationship between SLA and VM which ultimately broke down and let to the present action before me.

The background to VM obtaining SLA’s works – the licensing arrangements

In all SLA and VM were parties to seven licensing agreements, five of which were in respect of SLA’s street directory vector data and two of which were in respect of SLA’s address point vector data. The brief details of each of these agreements were as follows: Licensing agreements in respect of street directory vector data Licence Agreement for Use of Digitised Data (Agreement No SSD-[xxx]) dated 24 June 1999 between the Government of the Republic of Singapore (“the Government”) and Magicsoft Asia Systems Pte Ltd for a non-exclusive and non-transferable licence from the Government to use digitised data, which was defined as “information derived from the compilation, indexing and presentation of data in the Land Data Hub converted into an electronically retrievable format.³ The scope of the licensed digitised data was described in the schedule as the complete set of digitised Singapore street directory data (19th edition (Apr 1999)) in dxf format (which is a file in vector format). Clause 15 of the agreement provided that the agreement may be terminated by either party giving not less than 30 days’ notice to the other party. By consent of both parties, this agreement was re-assigned from Magicsoft Asia Systems Pte Ltd to VM with effect from 14 September 1999. Licence Agreement for Digitised Data Maintenance (Maintenance No SSD-[xxx]) dated 9 November 1999 between the Government and VM whereby the government shall provide quarterly updates of the licensed digitised data covered in Agreement No SSD-[xxx] above. Clause 8 of the agreement provided that the agreement may be terminated by either party giving not less than 30 days’ notice to the other party. Licence Agreement for Digitised Data Maintenance (Maintenance No SSD-[xxx]) dated 8 May 2000 between the Government and VM whereby the government shall provide quarterly updates of a later edition (April 2000 to January 2001) of licensed digitised data covered in Agreement No SSD-[xxx] above. Clause 8 of the agreement provided that the agreement may be terminated by either party giving not less than 30 days’ notice to the other party. Licence Agreement for Digitised Data Maintenance (Maintenance Agreement No SSD-[xxx]) dated 26 October 2001 between SLA and VM whereby SLA shall provide quarterly updates of a later edition (October 2001 and January 2002) of licensed digitised data covered in Agreement No SSD-[xxx] above. Clause 7 of the agreement provided that the agreement may be terminated by either party giving not less than 30 days’ notice to the other party. Agreement between SLA and VM dated 3 January 2003 in which SLA granted VM a non-exclusive and non-transferable licence to use the licensed data, which was defined in Schedule A of the agreement as the “Singapore Street Directory 21st Edition” (the 21st edition being that in 2002) and “Road Data”, both in dxf (vector) format. Updates were to be provided by SLA once a year for the street directory vector data and twice a year for the road data. Clause 4.1 stated that the licensed data was to be used to produce processed data for the sole purpose of providing mapping applications and services by VM in accordance with the agreement. Clause 18 provided that the agreement may be terminated by either party giving the other party one month’s notice in writing. Licensing agreements in respect of address point vector data Licence Agreement for Use of Digitised Data (Agreement No AP-[xxx]) dated 9 November 1999 between the Government and VM for a nonexclusive and non-transferable licence from the Government to use digitised data, which is defined as “information derived from the compilation, indexing and presentation of data in the Land Data Hub converted into an electronically retrievable format”.⁴ The scope of the licensed digitised data was described in the schedule as the complete set of address point data (October 1999) in dxf format. Clause 15 of the agreement provided that the agreement may be terminated by either party giving not less than 30 days’ notice to the other party. Licence Agreement for Digitised Data Maintenance (Maintenance No AP-[xxx]) dated 8 May 2000 between the Government and VM whereby the government shall provide quarterly updates of the licensed address point vector data (April 2000 to January 2001) covered in Agreement No AP-[xxx] above. Clause 8 of the agreement provided that the agreement may be terminated by either party giving not less than 30 days’ notice to the other party.

It was not disputed that the agreements entered into by the Government were transferred to LTA upon the formation of LTA on 1 June 2001 pursuant to section 22 of the Singapore Land Authority Act (Cap 301) (“SLA Act”) and that SLA had the authority to enforce the said agreements pursuant to section 25 of the SLA Act.

The Government and VM also entered into a licence agreement for the use of land base road data (April 2000) in dxf format on 22 June 2000 and which was later terminated on 23 July 2005, but this agreement did not form part of the dispute between parties.

By way of letter dated 10 June 2004, SLA wrote to VM giving 30 days’ notice to terminate all the above agreements enumerated in paragraphs 6(a) – (d), (f) and (g). In respect of the agreement in paragraph 6(e), SLA gave notice on the same date that the verbal extension of the agreement which was given out of goodwill would too expire in 30 days from 10 June 2004. It was not denied by VM that all seven agreements duly came to an end as at 10 Jul 2004. It was similarly not contended that SLA had terminated any agreements wrongfully – VM’s position was that VM’s online maps did not infringe the copyright in SLA’s works.

Although this did not have a direct bearing on the dispute between parties, the reason behind SLA’s termination notice should be given by way of background. VM suggested in its opening statement⁵ that the licence agreements were terminated in anticipation of the launch of SLA’s own online map search service at www.map.gov.sg. According to Mr Lim Ser Chin, a manager at the Land Information Centre of SLA, SLA became aware some time in 2003 that VM was taking legal action against several different parties for unauthorised reproduction of its online maps. Some of these parties had:

… either themselves or through their lawyers, written appeal letters to the Plaintiff and/or the Minister of Law, requesting for intervention by the Plaintiff and/or the Minister of Law … A group of Small and Medium Enterprises (“SMEs”) had also come together to appeal for intervention by the Plaintiff. Annexed hereto and marked as “LSC-3” is a copy of the letter dated 31 August 2004 from the group of SMEs. This letter stated that the Defendant had issued demand letters to some 500 companies in Singapore. Almost all of the letters expressed indignation and disapproval of the large payments demanded by the Defendants in exchange for settling the infringement suits, even where, in some cases, the unauthorized reproduction was minor and had already been removed (Lim Ser Chin’s affidavit of evidence-in-chief (“AEIC”) at page 5).

According to Mr Eugene Lim, a director and business development manager of VM, VM sent out demand letters to approximately 500 companies and instituted proceedings against 17 companies. He testified that VM claimed damages of $5,000 to $9,000 for each infringing image. If more images of...