I-Admin (Singapore) Pte Ltd v Hong Ying Ting
[2020] SGCA 32
(No 2)”), the court reiterated that damages were to be assessed at “the value of
the [confidential] information”. On the facts, there were two possibilities. If the
plaintiff’s information were of a sort that the defendant could have obtained by
employing a competent consultant, its value would be the consultant’s fee. This
would have been the cost saved by the defendant’s taking of the information. If,
however, the information were “something special” such as a patentable
invention, its value to a defendant would be higher. The value of the information
would be the price a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for it (per Lord
Denning MR at 813). Given the nature of the plaintiff’s information, it was
concluded that damages should be assessed on this latter basis.
77
It is uncontroversial that Singapore courts have the jurisdiction to award
equitable damages. Paragraph 14 of the First Schedule to the Supreme Court of
Judicature Act (Cap 322, 2007 Rev Ed), read with s 18(2) thereof, gives the
High Court the “[p]ower to grant all reliefs and remedies at law and equity,
including damages in addition to, or in substitution for, an injunction or specific
performance”; see also Turf Club Auto Emporium Pte Ltd and others v Yeo
Boong Hua and others and another appeal [2018] 2 SLR 655 at [141]. The
remedy of equitable damages is attractive because it affords the court the
flexibility to determine the manner in which damages should be assessed. To
that end, the dicta in the Seager decisions serve as a useful guide.
78
The respondents “saved themselves the time and trouble” (see Seager
(No 2) at 813) of developing the third respondent’s software and business
materials from scratch because they were able to refer to and even extract
content from the appellant’s confidential information. They used the appellant’s
materials as a “spring-board” (Seager at 932) to create their own intellectual
property. As an example, “cpf.xls”, the appellant’s CPF database, was created
using CPF calculation rule data as well as CPF contribution rates for different
37
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