The Moral High Ground
(Veronica Sainik @ Ronald v Meluha Life Sciences Sdn Bhd & Ors [2026] MLJU 1149)

Introduction

The facts read almost like a cautionary tale passed around in postgraduate seminars. A Master’s student at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya, spends years conducting stem cell research. She documents everything in a dissertation:

1. her methodology;
2. her raw data; and
3. her figures.

The work is accepted. Her degree is conferred. Then, a year after her dissertation is published, a biotechnology company files a patent. The patent’s contents bear a striking resemblance to her work. Her name appears nowhere on it.

The Court of Appeal’s decision in Veronica Sainik is, at its core, about that omission. But the judgment does considerably more than resolve one researcher’s grievance. It lays down, in terms clearer than Malaysian courts have managed before, exactly what moral rights protect and what courts will do when those protections are ignored.

Does the transfer of copyright also carry with it an author’s moral rights?

The High Court had dismissed the plaintiff’s claim on the basis that while modifications to her dissertation were found, there was no sufficient evidence of distortion or mutilation that adversely affected her honour or reputation. The Court of Appeal disagreed, and the reasoning is instructive.

The Court drew a sharp distinction between the transfer of copyright and the survival of moral rights. The plaintiff had assigned copyright in her dissertation to the University of Malaya, a routine act for postgraduate students under UM’s standard declaration. That assignment, the Court confirmed, does not carry moral rights along with it.

Under section 25 of the Copyright Act 1987, moral rights are inalienable: they stay with the author regardless of what happens to the economic rights. This had been established in principle in Syed Ahmad Bin Jamal v Dato Bandar Kuala Lumpur [2011] 2 CLJ 569, but Veronica Sainik is the first Malaysian appellate decision to apply it in a context where a copyright assignment had actually occurred, directly confronting the argument that a student who signs away her copyright loses her ability to object to misuse of her work.

On the right of integrity under section 25(2)(b), the Court of Appeal found the trial judge had committed a two-stage error:

1. First, having accepted that the patent modified the dissertation, the judge stopped short of asking whether those modifications materially changed the work within the meaning of section 25(2)(b)(i).
2. Second, having found identical figures and a similar writing style, the judge failed to ask whether the alterations could reasonably be regarded as adversely affecting the plaintiff’s honour or reputation under section 25(2)(b)(ii). Both sub-limbs must be addressed; the High Court addressed neither.

The standard the Court of Appeal applied is essentially objective. Drawing on the Australian decision in Perez & Ors v Fernandez [2012] FMCA 2, the Court held that proof of actual damage to reputation is not required. What matters is whether the treatment was derogatory, whether it distorted, mutilated, or altered the work in a way prejudicial to the author’s honour or reputation. The defendants’ own expert confirmed that the patent and the dissertation originated from a single experiment. The plaintiff’s figures appeared in the patent without attribution. Her methodology was modified and then presented as the defendants’ own. That, the Court held, was enough.

The patent invalidity finding

The Court of Appeal went further and invalidated Malaysian Patent No. MY-166810-A under section 56 of the Patents Act 1983, finding that the plaintiff’s dissertation, published in 2013, constituted prior art that fully anticipated the claims in the patent filed in August 2014.

The patent, already lapsed for non-payment of renewal fees, was declared void ab initio. This aspect of the decision is technically straightforward on the facts but carries an important practical message: a postgraduate thesis deposited with a public university is prior art for patent purposes, and a filing strategy that ignores this is not merely legally questionable but fatally flawed from the outset.

Conclusion and the impact of this decision

Malaysian courts have historically been reluctant to grant substantial damages for moral rights infringement. Awards have tended to be modest and the cause of action, while recognised on paper since the 1987 Act, has seen little serious litigation.

The Veronica Sainik award of RM100,000 in damages plus RM100,000 in aggravated damages, a total of RM200,000, with interest from the date of filing, sends a different message.

Aggravated damages in IP cases in Malaysia are comparatively rare; their application here reflects the Court’s view that the defendants’ conduct, claiming the plaintiff’s logbook as their own, denying her any acknowledgement, and persisting in defence through trial, was not an inadvertent oversight but deliberate appropriation.

Looking further ahead, this decision will likely have four concrete effects on Malaysian IP practice:

1. The first concerns institutional IP policies in universities. Most Malaysian public universities require postgraduate students to assign copyright to the institution as a condition of degree conferment. Veronica Sainik confirms that this practice, however widespread, does not extinguish the student’s moral rights. Universities and their industry collaborators will need to build explicit moral rights licences into their research agreements if they intend to use thesis data in commercial filings. The absence of such licences exposes all collaborating parties to the kind of claim that succeeded here.
2. The second concerns patent due diligence. Whilst commercial patent databases remain the primary search tool, a thorough novelty search should, where practicable, extend to accessible institutional repositories and thesis databases, particularly for technology areas with strong academic research output in Malaysia (such as agricultural processing, biotechnology, and materials science). A publicly accessible thesis that predates the priority date could constitute prior art in invalidity proceedings, and its omission from a search would not provide a defence to a novelty challenge. However, the weight to be accorded to any particular thesis as prior art will depend on the circumstances of its accessibility at the relevant date.
3. Third, the decision raises the stakes in research misconduct disputes. Historically, a student who believed her work was misused faced a difficult choice: complain internally through academic channels, or litigate copyright at significant cost with uncertain prospects. Veronica Sainik shows that moral rights infringement is a workable standalone cause of action, separate from copyright infringement, and that courts will not require proof of economic loss. This may encourage more plaintiffs, not only postgraduate students, but also researchers, consultants, and any author whose work is absorbed into a third party’s commercial application without attribution.
4. Fourth, the judgment addresses a gap that practitioners in IP litigation have been navigating for some time: the evidential standard for harm to honour and reputation. The Court of Appeal’s adoption of the Perez principle, that derogatory treatment itself can constitute the breach, removes the need for extensive evidence of actual reputational damage. Expert testimony on the nature of the modification and the norms of the relevant professional community (here, academic research) appears to be sufficient.

This article was authored by Suaran Sidhu (Co-Head) and Ashwinathan Selvanathan (Associate).

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