PropertyGuru vs 99.co: What’s next for user-generated content in Singapore

Singapore Supreme Court / Photo credit: Fatboo / flickr

When Singapore’s Supreme Court handed down its judgment in the breach of contract and copyright infringement dispute between rival online property sites PropertyGuru and 99.co earlier this month, both sides claimed victory.

PropertyGuru co-founder and executive director Jani Rautiainen said in a statement that his company was “very happy with the decision that is in our favor.”

99.co founder and CEO Darius Cheung said “we have won” and that the ruling was “a victory for the Internet, the challengers, and most importantly, the content creators.”

According to Cheung, this wasn’t just a spat between two competitors – it was an attack on online businesses that rely on third-party content, and user-generated content (UGC) in particular.

See: 99.co and PropertyGuru each claim victory in copyright and contract dispute

So who really won? And what does the decision mean for the myriad businesses that lean on UGC?

Copyright and user-generated content

While PropertyGuru can claim at least partial victory with regards to 99.co’s breach of part of a 2015 settlement agreement between the two, the court dismissed its copyright infringement claims.

“In summary, the copying, enlargement, or resizing of an artistic work, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, does not make the resulting image a copyrighted work,” Hoo Sheau Peng, the judge presiding over the case, wrote in her decision.

She also ruled that the addition of a watermark to a photo – something that PropertyGuru had done to those posted on its site by agents – does not “make the altered image an original work,” and therefore eligible for copyright protection in its own right.

The judgment does not detract from long-established copyright principles, says Mark Teng, an advocate and solicitor specializing in intellectual property law at Infinitus Law in Singapore.

“It is clear that the ownership of copyright in such original works belonged to the users who took the photographs and not PropertyGuru,” he adds.

PropertyGuru co-founder and executive director Jani Rautiainen / Photo credit: PropertyGuru

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