BUS205: Company and Tort Law

Rachel and Monica were best friends who graduated from business school in the same university. Rachel pursued a career in financial journalism while Monica remained in the business school as an academic.

Recently, Rachel was asked by her employer, The Business Journal, to research for an article on the co-relation between sustainable development and financial performance of Singapore stock exchange (SGX) listed companies. Information was extracted from the sustainability and financial reports of these companies which Rachel compiled and summarised into a report. The data was summarised thematically based on the size and industry of the companies. Apart from the summary, Rachel also prepared an analysis of the reasons for the findings in her summary and argued that companies perform better if they have good sustainability practices across all types of industries and company sizes (Sustainability Report).

Rachel emailed her paper to Monica for her feedback and comments. Monica told her colleague, Joey, who was a corporate governance expert, about the Sustainability Report and sent the attachment to him.

Monica gave feedback, pointing out errors in certain assumptions in Rachels analysis, which Rachel adopted into her published paper.

Joey had always wanted to carry out his own analysis of the performance of listed companies measured against their sustainability governance. He looked at Rachels report and took the view that it was not good enough. He used some financial data from Rachels report which was extracted from public sources, combined it with his own research of market information regarding sustainability practices of listed companies and published a paper of the findings with his own methodology. The paper was used for teaching purposes in the university.

Required:

Identify and describe the intellectual property right that may be owned by The Business Journal. Give your views as to whether The Business Journal may enforce the intellectual property right against Monica and Joey and any defences they may have. (20 marks)