Chung Nian Lam

Practice Areas

Lam Chung Nian is the Head of the Intellectual Property, Technology & Data Group. He handles both contentious and non-contentious matters in the areas of intellectual property ("IP"), media, information technology ("IT"), data protection and telecommunications law, and has extensive experience working on regulatory, transactional, enforcement and advisory projects in these areas, counting among his clients multinational companies, listed corporations and government regulators.

Chung Nian's IP experience covers all aspects of transactional, enforcement and advisory work involving IP, technology, media and telecommunications matters, including franchising, licensing, securitisation, due diligence, acquisitions and divestments. He also acts on behalf of international rights protection agencies in the music and movie industries, and some of the world's best-known content producers in the motion picture and music industries, as well as collecting societies, television networks and other creative sector clients.

His IT experience covers software licensing, outsourcing, systems development and integration agreements, as well as maintenance, service level and "as-a-service" agreements. He has worked on projects involving key IT infrastructure and mission critical systems, having represented both IT system developers and consultants as well as large institutional customers in the aviation, banking, financial services, public transport and healthcare sectors.

In the telecommunications sector, he has handled customer and vendor agreements, infrastructure roll-outs, submarine cable projects, VoIP, SIP and unified communications as well as regulatory clearance projects, having advised international cloud service providers, multinational telecommunications and networking companies.

He also has extensive experience advising on personal data protection matters, having handled numerous projects involving the treatment and handling of customer and/or employee data across a range of sectors, with clients including some of Singapore's largest banks, insurers, telecommunications, transport, media, hospitality, healthcare, and property companies.

Professional Memberships

Chung Nian is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb) and has also been appointed as an IP Adjudicator empowered to hear disputes before the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore ("IPOS"), the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) Panel of Arbitrators for Intellectual Property Disputes as well as to the World Intellectual Property Organisation ("WIPO") Panel of Film and Media Mediators, Arbitrators and Experts, and the panel of mediators for the IPOS-WIPO initiative for Mediation for Proceedings Instituted in IPOS.

He is the President of the Asian Patent Attorney Association (Singapore Chapter), a member of the International Trademark Association, and the Intellectual Property Committee of the Law Society of Singapore. He has also served as a Co-Chair of the International Bar Association ("IBA") Communications Law Committee, of which he is now a member of its Advisory Board, and has also been appointed as a member of the IBA Presidential Task Force on Cyber Security.

Chung Nian has been appointed to the Board of Trustees of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and also to the board of Assurity Trusted Solutions Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) which handles private sector IT solutions and interfaces for Singapore’s national digital identity initiatives. He has also held faculty positions at Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), as well as for courses offered by IP Academy (Singapore), the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University and the Singapore Institute of Legal Education (SILE).

His expertise has also been recognised by the Singapore Academy of Law where he is one of the first lawyers in Singapore to be accredited as a Senior Accredited Specialist (Data & Digital Economy).

Publications

- Data Protection & Privacy: International Series (3ed) (Sweet & Maxwell, 2016)

- The Art Collecting Legal Handbook (Thomson Reuters, 2013 and 2016)

- Communications: Regulation and Outsourcing Global Guide (Thomson Reuters, 2015)

- IP Client Strategies in the Asia-Pacific (Aspatore Books, 2011)

Work Highlights

Significant transactions that Chung Nian has been involved in include advising / acting for the following:

- MSD in its intellectual property dispute with Merck KGAA over the "Merck" name in Singapore proceedings.

- Singapore Airlines Limited on its technology outsourcing agreements with its hardware, software and solutions vendors, including systems integration, development and other technology deployments, across traditional turnkey, waterfall, project delivery, Agile, "as-a-service" and other contracting models.

- The Singapore Government Technology Agency ("GovTech") on its technology and other SmartNation initiatives.

- EPIC Healthcare on its agreements to roll out of its electronic medical records (“EMR”) solutions to public hospitals in Singapore.

- OCBC Bank and DBS Bank on their electronic banking and other digitalisation initiatives, including electronic re-papering, licensing and other agreements to support its API banking offerings, regional common electronic account access and adoption of new payment rails.