Controversial Spore site sold for US$1

Asia Sentinel reports that Singapore has resorted to trademark infringement as another weapon to silence dissent. This is based on recent exposs in the racy tabloid The New Paper purportedly unmasking the anonymous owner of the critical socio-political website Temasek Review.

The site, set up a year ago, has won a wide following among news-starved Singaporeans although Malaysians may find the site relatively tame, compared to the explosive revelations sometimes published at Malaysia Today, and the highly critical commentaries in all the major online news sites. Since public dissent of any kind is a rarity in Singapore, Temasek Review rapidly gained an audience.

Dr Joseph Ong was named by The New Paper tabloid as owner of Temasek Review. He denied it and accused the paper of conducting a smear campaign.

After The New Paper had supposedly exposed Singaporean doctor Joseph Ong as the purported owner of Temasek Review, the governments sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings, wrote to him asking the website to change its name, because the companys annual report from 2004 was called Temasek Review, until it was changed this year to Temasek Report.

Its been a month-long battle of wills; the latest round being that Temasek Review has announced it has been sold to a non-Singaporean business person living overseas for the sum of US$1 and the cost of one years dedicated hosting.

The Asia Sentinel story puts the focus on the trademark aspect of the case. Its written by a lawyer, after all.

Singapores New Weapon Against Dissent
Written by Paul Karl Lukacs
Wednesday, 27 October 2010

Trademark infringement action now will do the job
The government of Singapore has revealed its new weapon against political opponents: trademark infringement lawsuits.

Singapore is synonymous with soft authoritarianism, a system under which dissent is quashed principally through co-option, self-censorship, gerryman! dering a nd the strategic filing of civil lawsuits against opposition politicians.

While the Singaporean regime is not above imprisoning its critics, the authorities prefer to use courtroom procedures that appear superficially to be content-neutral applications of typical laws. The island nations activists can expect to be sued for defamation or campaign violations, to have financially debilitating court judgments entered against them and to be barred from running for Parliament after they are forced into bankruptcy.

Now the countrys long-time rulers, the leaders of the Peoples Action Party, are attempting to use trademark infringement claims to identify anonymous critics and to squelch oppositional speech. So far as can be determined, despite the fact that the government keeps a tight leash on the mainstream media, it appears to be the first time the island republic has gone after an Internet publication although the opposition Singapore Democratic Party delivers a steady diet of anti-government rhetoric over the Net and an incessant stream of angry bloggers deliver up daily fare.

The Temasek Review is a more formidable operation. In 2009, one or more unidentified anti-PAP dissidents began publishing news, analysis and opinion on the website. The sites domain name (www.temasekreview.com) was registered by proxy, and the site indicates it operates through a business entity in Panama, far outside the jurisdiction of the Singaporean courts (in which government-backed lawsuits against political opponents have been consistently successful).

On October 9, 2010, a state-aligned tabloid, The New Paper, reported that the sites founder was a Singaporean physician named Joseph Ong Chor Teck. Six days later, the current controversy began in earnest, when Temasek Holdings, Singapores principal sovereign wealth fund, served a cease and desist letter on Dr Ong.

The purpose of this letter is to request, if you are the founder of the website, that the website stops using the good name of Temasek Rev! iew and that its name be changed, the letter stated. The fund explained that it had used the name Temasek Review since 2004 as the title of its annual report and that the web site was capitalizing on the good will and reputation of the name in a manner that was misleading and irresponsible.

Dr Ong, for his part, has said he is not currently involved in the sites ownership or management, but the government-linked Temasek Holdings maintains that Dr Ong is in touch with the sites personnel and can communicate the funds demands to them. In response to the well-publicized cease and desist letter, the independent website temporarily changed its title to New Temasek Review, transferred its domain name to an unidentified non-Singaporean and now appears to be publishing as normal under its original title.

There is little question that Temasek Holdings is speaking on behalf of the government. Although the fund prefers to present itself as an independent profit-seeking enterprise, Temasek is recognized as a government company by the Singaporean Constitution, and it is owned by the Ministry of Finance. Moreover, personnel is policy, and Tamesek is near the heart of the regime. Temaseks CEO is Ho Ching, the wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the daughter-in-law of the islands paramount leader, Lee Kuan Yew.

The cease and desist letters were sent under the name of Goh Yong Siang, a Lee family loyalist. After graduating from Singapores Flight Training School in 1970, Goh rose through the ranks, ending his military tenure in 1998 as the head of the Air Force. Since then, Goh has served as a member of the board of directors of Singapore Airlines, was involved in an unsuccessful US venture named Patriot Air and, in 2006, was named to Temaseks Thailand office as part of Hos purchase of the Shin Corporation telecommunications concern.

Although Temasek has not yet filed a lawsuit, the cease and desist letters indicate that a trademark infringement action is contemplated as do certain other maneuvers ! by the c ompany. And as dissidents and international press organizations have discovered, Singapore has a long history of following through with its threats of lawsuits.

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