The High Cost of Forgotten Authorship: Moral Rights and the RM200,000 Lesson

In the corporate world, intellectual property (IP) discussions usually revolve around who “owns” the copyright or the patent of a particular work. However, a recent landmark decision by the Court of Appeal in Veronica Sainik @ Ronald v Meluha Life Sciences Sdn Bhd & 2 Ors serves as a stark reminder that owning the economic rights to a work does not give a business free rein over the creator’s “moral rights”.

The Core Conflict: From Dissertation to Patent

The dispute began when the claimant, a Master’s student at the University of Malaya (UM), discovered that her research collaborators – a biotechnology company and individual researchers – had obtained a patent that drew heavily from her dissertation.

• The Infringement: The defendants utilized substantial portions of the claimant’s methodology, raw data, and findings in their patent application.
• The Omission: They filed the patent application without identifying the claimant as the author or inventor and modified parts of her work without her consent.
• The High Court Hurdle: Initially, the High Court dismissed her claim, noting she had assigned the copyright of her dissertation to the university, thus losing her right to sue for copyright infringement.

The Appellate Verdict: Moral Rights are “Inalienable”

The Court of Appeal overturned the decision, clarifying a vital distinction for commercial entities: moral rights remain with the author even after the copyright has been assigned or transferred.

The Court of Appeal identified two specific breaches by the defendants under Section 25(2) of the Copyright Act 1987:-

• Right of Paternity (Attribution): this is an author’s legal right to be identified and acknowledged as the author. By removing the claimant’s name and failing to credit her, the defendants denied her the recognition essential to her professional standing.
• Right of Integrity: this allows an author to prevent “derogatory treatment” – distortion, mutilation, or modification – of his/her work that harms his/her honour or reputation. The court found that modifying the claimant’s small-scale research to support the large-scale claims in a patent undermined her academic credibility and professional dedication.

The Consequences: Financial and Strategic Blows

The defendants faced significant legal and commercial repercussions:-

• Monetary Damages: the Court of Appeal awarded the claimant RM100,000 in general damages and RM100,000 in aggravated damages, citing the defendants’ conduct as a factor. Costs were of RM50,000 also awarded to the claimant.
• Patent Invalidation: because the claimant’s dissertation was published in 2013 -before the application for the patent was filed in 2014 – it was considered “prior art” under the Patents Act 1983. Consequently, the patent was declared invalid and revoked for lack of novelty and inventive step.

 The Business Dilemma

While this decision affirms the protection afforded to individual creators under the Copyright Act 1987, it also highlights that the area of moral rights is highly problematic for commercial exploitation of copyright as it can create significant practical difficulties for copyright owners, particularly where copyrighted works are incorporated into functional or frequently updated materials.

For example, the right of paternity or attribution raises questions as to how authors should be properly identified or acknowledged in contexts such as product manuals, technical documentation, software interfaces, source code, or other materials where attribution may be impractical, disruptive, or inconsistent with commercial presentation. These difficulties are compounded where such materials are routinely revised, adapted, localised, or updated over time, as changes to the work may also engage the author’s right of integrity.

In practice, copyright owners must therefore navigate the tension between their ability to commercially exploit, modify, and maintain the work, and the author’s continuing personal rights to be credited and to object to derogatory treatment or prejudicial alteration of the work.

The difficulties are compounded by the fact that the Copyright Act 1987 has no provision for the assignment or waiver of moral rights and that creates uncertainty as to whether such rights could be assigned or waived by authors.

Requirements relating to moral rights vary across jurisdictions. For example, the UK adopts a comparatively less stringent approach where the right of attribution generally only applies where it has been expressly asserted, and there are broad statutory exceptions, including in relation to computer programmes and works created by employees in the course of their employment.

Perhaps it is timely to consider whether the Copyright Act 1987 should be amended to place moral rights on a more practical footing, so that copyright owners can exploit their economic rights with greater certainty and without incurring disproportionate compliance costs or facing an elevated risk of moral rights infringement. Until such reform is introduced, however, copyright owners should remain mindful of these risks and take appropriate steps to manage them.

This article is authored by our Partner, Mr Ng Kim Poh. The information in this article is intended only to provide general information and does not constitute any legal opinion or professional advice.

Written by:

Ng Kim Poh
Partner
T: +603 2050 1870
kimpoh.ng@taypartners.com.my