Malaysia Holds Successful Event for Digital Creators

22 November 2022

The Kre8tif event hosted by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) recently ended with a boom. In addition to being as a hub for those interested in the business to explore possibilities, education, production, and distribution, this event is a platform that links Southeast Asian animation studios with clients from all over the world.

MDEC announced three digital contest winners. Among the categories were Southeast Asia Kre8tif! Award, Digital Content Creators Challenge (DC3), and the 24th DigiCon6 ASIA Award during Kre8tif! 2022.

“I think this is a very good initiative to create and enhance IP in Malaysia,” says Wong Jin Nee, a senior partner at Wong Jin Nee & Teo in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “With competitions like this, it helps not only to enhance IP generation and IP awareness but also assists content creators in protecting their IP rights through the funding assistance. IP plays a pivotal role in the digital world and it is pertinent, especially for content creators, to be aware of their IP rights to safeguard their creations from unauthorized exploitation. While protecting IP rights may be costly, lack of protection will be even more damaging. Such competition is certainly a good and timely move to enhance IP creation, IP awareness and IP protection in Malaysia.”

She adds that the most important thing about enhancing IP is to safeguard it from unauthorized use and exploitation, not to mention providing IP owners with ways to monetize IP and generate income streams.

“ IP protection may extend from registering the trademarks, securing grant of patents/utility innovations for new inventions to protecting the research and development efforts, resources, creativity and time expended to generate new IP rights. Once the IP is protected, this will enable an easier path to enforce the rights,” she says.

There are myriad of ways to enhance one’s IP protection, commercialization and enforcement and some of which may include:

Protecting IP rights locally as well as in foreign markets;
Expanding into new markets, enhancing business growth and extending new product line by licensing, franchising or merchandising models;
Implementing security measures by imposing confidentiality obligations on recipients through non-disclosure agreements;
Ensuring employees or key personnel involved in the creation of IP confirm the vesting of IP rights or where necessary to assign ownership of IP.
If IP ownership is shared between different parties, this should be clearly set out in contractual arrangements such as IP Benefit Sharing Agreement to avoid any disputes on the ownership of IP at a later stage;
Implementing an IP management regime to always review and monitor IP to ensure IP is not being misused or abused; and / or
Constantly innovating business, products and services in the digital space, to take into account the latest trends and demands of consumers and more importantly to ensure that protection is sought for such innovations. There is no end to creativity and the competition in the digital market is challenging.
It is prudent to conduct due diligence and be mindful of third party rights to minimize the risk of infringement.
IP creation, protection, maintenance, commercialization and enforcement should be a holistic approach.