I-Admin (Singapore) Pte Ltd v Hong Ying Ting
[2020] SGCA 32
therefore turns on whether the respondents reproduced the organisation of the
Payitem Bibles.
41
In our judgment, the third respondent’s payitem bible drafts were not
material reproductions of the appellant’s files. While these drafts contained
duplicated Excel sheets from the Payitem Bibles, a closer examination of Mr
Pillay’s report reveals minor differences in arrangement from the earliest
version of “MasterPayitem_Singapore.xls”. In merging the appellant’s and third
respondent’s lists of payitems, Ms Lim added an additional blank column
entitled “Tax Cat”, not found in the Payitem Bibles.
42
As for the third respondent’s finalised payitem bible, this exhibits more
significant modifications. One example is the inclusion of a sophisticated
naming convention which encodes payitem names to give additional
information about each payitem. The Payitem Bibles were not simply
repurposed for the third respondent’s business but were transformed into a new
and unique product. In our judgment, the Judge correctly found that the
respondents’ database tables were sufficiently distinguishable from the Payitem
Bibles and that “[t]he process by which [the third respondent’s] materials were
created did not go towards the quality of those materials” (GD at [106]). The
appellant’s claim for copyright infringement was therefore correctly rejected by
the Judge and we dismiss that part of its appeal.
Reviewing breach of confidence
43
We turn to the claim for breach of confidence. Traditionally, a claim for
breach of confidence rested on three elements being shown: (i) that the
information is confidential in nature, (ii) that it was imparted in circumstances
of confidence; and (iii) that it has been used without authorisation and to the
detriment of the plaintiff (see [20] above). However, in recent years, the
20
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents