In a landmark gathering of leading legal scholars, policymakers, and industry experts from around the world, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Director General Mr Daren Tang delivered a keynote address calling for human creativity to remain at the core as intellectual property (IP) laws evolve and adapt to fast-evolving technologies.
"Generative AI has evolved quickly yet remains a skilful replicator, lacking the real spark of originality and inventiveness that characterises human innovation and creativity. We should therefore see Gen AI as a tool, and like any tool, ensure that it is used for good," said Mr Tang. "Ingenuity, invention and creativity is a fundamental part of who we are as a human species, and technology, as well as the IP system, must continue to protect, nurture and support this, never forgetting to put the human creator at its centre."
Mr Tang's call set the tone for the two-day "Intellectual Property and Technology in the 21st Century" conference held on 4 Aug and 5 Aug 2025 where more than 100 participants from over a dozen countries representing academia, government agencies, industry and the legal profession will engage in deep discussion on pressing IP challenges arising from rapid technological advancement.
Organised by the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law (TRAIL) and the EW Barker Centre for Law & Business at NUS Faculty of Law (NUS Law), the conference is co-hosted with law schools from Columbia, Oxford, and Tsinghua, marking the first-ever academic collaboration of its kind across these leading global institutions. The conference is also supported by partners such as Google, Bytedance, the Singapore Academy of Law and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS).
Keeping pace with AI, creativity and global competition
The challenges facing IP law in the age of AI are far-reaching, going beyond legal doctrine into sectors as diverse as technology, entertainment, and fashion, prompting a rethink of how businesses innovate and compete, to how creators, artists, and designers protect their work.
Mr Adam Williams, Chief Executive of the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO), said: "IP rights give creators, inventors, and investors the confidence to turn their ideas into reality, realise new opportunities and adapt to challenges. Ongoing dialogue between IP offices, and with industry and practitioners, is key to ensuring global IP frameworks remain fit for the future to encourage new discoveries and creations to thrive."
In July this year, the UK IPO launched a public consultation on the proposed Standard Essential Patents measures to support the UK's technology-driven economic growth.
"AI is a great economic opportunity but a key issue is its potential to disrupt the livelihoods of many," said Mr Tan Kong Hwee, Chief Executive of IPOS. "Governments, enterprises, and society must work in tandem to find the right balance that adopts a human-centric approach to ensure protection for IP owners' rights whilst facilitating innovation in a responsible and ethical way. At the end of the day, we must remember that people are at the heart of it all; that is why IPOS has committed to helping creators and innovators understand their IP rights as they navigate this fast-evolving technology."
Mr Williams and Mr Tan were part of a roundtable amongst heads of IP offices along with Mr Tang, following his opening keynote address at the conference. The roundtable was moderated by TRAIL Co-Director, Professor David Tan from NUS Law.
Prof Tan, a pioneer and expert in entertainment law and fashion law, said while policy makers are working to reform IP protection, creative industries have turned current limitations into opportunities. The global fashion industry, including Singapore, is a prime example of IP's 'negative space' in which creation and innovation can thrive without significant protection from intellectual property law.
He said, "In Singapore, trademark, patent, and design laws give strong protection for logos, inventions, and product designs. But when it comes to copyright, especially in fashion, the protection is weaker. "Knockoffs" often copy the look and feel of an original without directly copying logos or breaking the law. With the rise of social media, the internet, and AI tools, more people now have the ability to remix and build on existing designs. As a result, success in the industry is less about having exclusive rights, and more about setting trends, building a strong brand, and earning customer loyalty."
Highlighting opportunities, Prof Tan echoed sentiments recently shared by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong that Singapore can get ahead of new technology like AI to create new jobs[1].
"More designers can use generative AI to help them more quickly create 2D and 3D designs from packaging to clothing and furniture, and small businesses and budding entrepreneurs in particular can get their products to market a lot faster," he said.
Rethinking Responsibility and Creativity in the Age of Generative AI
At the conference, over thirty presentations by experts in various fields of practice and research will unpack how emerging technologies continue to raise urgent questions that affect not just legal systems, but the public's rights, safety, and creative freedom.
In recent years, powerful AI tools that can create text, images, or music have made courts and lawmakers think hard about some big copyright questions-like whether something made by AI can be protected by copyright if there wasn't enough human effort involved.
Associate Professor He Tianxiang from City University of Hong Kong said, "It is the mind of the human creator, fallible and inspired, that copyright law was built to protect and incentivise. The courts must remain clear-eyed and perhaps even sceptical when presented with AI-generated content, whether text, image or music, cloaked with a thin veneer of human input."
Prof He says the burden should be on the claimant to prove their authorship, not on the public to disprove it.
"Generative AI challenges us to reaffirm what copyright is meant to protect: not merely the existence of a text or image, but the fact that a human mind originated it," he added. "It pushes us to clarify that the law's protection is awarded to the act of human creativity, however small or large, and not to the mere act of generating content."
Another emerging legal challenge is 'artificial causation', which is having to figure out who is responsible when AI creates something that causes a legal problem.
Professor Shyamkrishna Balganesh from Columbia Law School said, "When prompted by a human actor, a generative AI application uses the patterns that it learned from voluminous data to generate an output that is seemingly responsive to the prompt and largely simulates a likely human response. However, this output may infringe copyright, contain falsities that is defamatory or violate another individual's privacy."
The question then is who or what is responsible for the output: The person who used the tool, the AI system itself, or someone else? Prof Balganesh argued that solving the puzzle of artificial causation in the law is crucial not just for the legal regulation of generative AI, but also for the very working of multiple areas of law where the inquiry remains human-focused.
WIPO will be launching the AI Infrastructure Interchange, known as AIII or "A-triple-I" in December 2025. The AIII will be a dedicated space for exploring technical and operational questions about copyright infrastructure in the age of AI, as well as a neutral forum where creators, rights-holders, developers and experts can exchange ideas and explore practical solutions.
[1] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/spore-can-and-must-meaningfully-apply-tech-like-ai-in-a-way-that-creates-jobs-for-locals-pm-wong
