Speech by Senior Minister of State for Law and Education, Indranee Rajah at the launch of IP Expedition 2013

24 JUL 2013

24 Jul 2013 Posted in Speeches

Mr. Tan Yih San
Chief Executive of IPOS

Mr. Danny Poh
Principal of River Valley Primary School

Guests, teachers and students of River Valley Primary School

Good morning.

IP Expedition

  1. I am very happy to be here today to mark the start of a new and exciting learning journey for all of you.

  2. The IP Expedition, organised by IPOS, aims to share with students like all of you here, the importance of respecting copyrighted works in recognition of the hard work of the creators. Delivered through a 30-minute interactive skit, the IP Expedition is part of IPOS’ Honour Intellectual Property (or HIP) Alliance programme to help students like yourself understand and appreciate intellectual property and copyright concepts better.

  3. I am heartened to hear from IPOS that our schools have been very supportive of this programme. Before the official launch today, 37 schools had already booked the IP Expedition skit for 37,659 students 1 ,which will run from now till the end of 2014. This is a very encouraging start and I hope that many more schools will join us and benefit from this exciting initiative.

Creators and Consumers of Intellectual Property

  1. Some of you may ask: what is intellectual property and why should we be interested in it? Well, IP refers to the creations of your mind; things we come up with our imagination. Common examples of IP we encounter daily include expressions captured in books, drawings, photographs, songs and movies. These works are the fruits of labour of the creators.
  1. In fact, many of you here today may have created IP on a daily basis. I would like to share some examples of IP creation in our primary schools today. In Holy Innocents’ Primary School, five students created an award-winning animation video to encourage responsible behaviour in a gracious and harmonious society. I also saw this morning that many of you here create wonderful music, which is also a form of IP, using the GarageBand software, as part of your music lessons.
  1. Now, imagine for a minute. If your newly composed music was copied and submitted for a competition by a fellow student without your knowledge. How would you feel when you find out about it? I am sure you would be very upset because you had spent a lot of time and effort on this work yet someone else has taken credit for it.
  1. This is where copyright comes into the picture. Copyright gives you, as the creator, ownership over your works. This means you can decide who may use your creations and how your creation may be used. As long as it is your original creation, you are entitled to copyright protection.
  1. As we create IP in our daily lives, we are also consumers or users of IP. For instance, the songs that we listen to, the movies that we watch and the books that we read are also original works belonging to other creators. These creators had invested a lot of time, creativity, effort and money to produce their works. It is therefore only right that we recognise and reward their efforts, so that they will be encouraged to produce more and better works in the future for everyone to enjoy.

Educators’ Role

  1. With the launch of IP Expedition, I urge our educators to play a bigger role in IP education. Singapore’s economic growth will be increasingly driven by innovation and knowledge creation. This makes the protection and exploitation of IP all the more relevant and important for our future growth. It is therefore vital for educators to ensure that our future generation – who will be tomorrow’s inventors, designers, composers, and consumers – are equipped with essential IP knowledge.

Conclusion

  1. In closing, I would like to thank our guests, principal and staff of River Valley Primary School for being so supportive of the IP Expedition programme. I can see that every one of you is excited to watch the skit. Before I close, I would like to quote HIP Alliance, “Support Originality, You Make a Difference!” Thank you.

[1] Accurate as of 17 July2013, 1500hrs

Last updated on 24 Jul 2013