Stansfield sues its ex-lecturers, institute

A LEGAL dispute between two private schools over lecture notes has made its way to the High Court.

Stansfield College, represented by lawyer Devinder K. Rai, has sued three of its ex-lecturers, accusing them of copying its teaching materials after moving to the Singapore Accounting Academy (SAA).

The academy is the training arm of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore, the national body of accountants. The institute is also named as a defendant in Stansfield's suit.

Pending a trial, which has been set for October, the court has stopped the use of the lecture notes by the institute.

The materials in question involve four sets of lecture notes linked to the University of London degree programme offered by both schools in areas such as business, finance and accounting.

The programme is taught by local lecturers based on course syllabus or study guides provided by the University of London. Stansfield's lecture notes are used as a framework for its classes and given to students to help them in their revision. They were developed over time by its lecturers. The notes cover four subjects - economics, mathematics, sociology and accounting.

It was not stated in court documents if the defendants had a hand in developing any of the notes themselves.

But Stansfield claims that the three former lecturers - Mr Teo Chua Chin, Mr T. Durairajoo and Mr Alan Ng Kam Cheong - had breached their confidentiality agreements by revealing the contents of the notes to their new employers.

Stansfield was founded in 1993 and has about 1,000 students. It claims that the lecturers and the institute infringed copyright laws by using notes it had developed over many years. The SAA has about 6,000 students.

The dispute arose due to a chance encounter between Stansfield senior lecturer Vincent Seet and his neighbour, who happened to be taking lessons at the SAA and had asked him to help her with her studies. When Mr Seet looked at her notes from the academy, he allegedly saw many similarities and reported the matter to the school.

Stansfield hired private investigators to obtain copies of the SAA's lecture notes and found they allegedly contained many similarities, and even the same mistakes.

The dean of Stansfield's business school, Ms Sandra Yeo, who has been with the college for 15 years, said there were typographical errors in her lecture notes on economics and also missing words.

There was also one mistake in which she had written (EDG) to stand for Excess Supply of Goods, instead of (ESG). The same omissions and mistakes were found in the lecture notes provided by the SAA to its students, claims Ms Yeo.

The former lecturers, who had been with Stansfield for between four and 13 years, refuted the college's allegations, saying the lecture notes were 'essentially compilations of materials and information obtained from various sources such as textbooks and reference materials'.

Therefore, they argue, Stansfield cannot claim its lecture notes were original works in which copyright existed.

The institute also argued that the material found in the lecture notes in question was generally accessible to the public.