[ FIG. 01 — ABOUT OBITER ]
Brought together around
one recurring problem.
R&D teams in Singapore were generating far more IP than their internal records could track — not from a lack of effort, but from a shortage of practical documentation tools built for operations people rather than legal departments.
Back to Home[ FIG. 02 — COMPANY STORY ]
How Obiter came to be
Obiter was set up in 2019 by a small group of operations consultants who had spent years helping technology companies in Singapore build internal administrative functions. A pattern kept appearing: companies with active R&D programmes had almost no structured way to capture, record or track the intellectual property coming out of that work.
The existing options felt mismatched. Legal-firm disclosure forms were designed with practitioners in mind, not operations managers. Consultancy engagements tended to focus on filing strategy rather than the day-to-day register work that actually keeps records current. Generic document templates ignored the specific intake and review cadences that R&D teams run.
The founding team took a different position. Internal IP administration is an operations discipline, not a legal one. The documents, workflows and registers that support it can be standardised, structured and handed to operations people to run — provided someone builds them at the right level of specificity.
From 2019 to 2022, the team worked with a handful of Singapore-based companies on a consulting basis, running discovery projects that mapped their existing disclosure practices and identifying the gaps between what was being captured and what was being lost. Those projects produced the first versions of what became the Obiter template library.
Since then, the template pack, setup engagement and annual programme have been refined with input from R&D operations leads across technology, biomedical and advanced manufacturing companies in the region. The core offering remains documentation-focused and operational in scope — Obiter does not advise on filing strategy or substantive IP matters, which are referred to qualified practitioners when they arise.
The office is at Marina Bay, and most engagements are run with companies based in Singapore, though the templates and runbooks are used by teams in other jurisdictions too.
[ FIG. 03 — MISSION ]
What drives the work
Operational clarity
Every deliverable we produce should be immediately usable by the operations team it is handed to — no translation layer, no specialist interpretation required.
Honest scope
We are clear about what we do and what we refer out. Internal administration is our domain. Substantive IP matters go to qualified practitioners.
Built-in capability
We aim to leave teams better equipped to run their own administration after working with us, not more dependent on external support.
[ FIG. 04 — TEAM ]
The people behind the work
Liang Tengfei
Principal Advisor
Former operations lead at two Singapore technology companies. Has designed IP administration functions from scratch and shaped the core Obiter methodology since founding.
Rashida Binte Halim
Engagement Lead
Runs the setup engagement and annual programme work. Background in document-control systems across regulated R&D environments in Singapore and Malaysia.
Marcus Khoo
Template Development
Maintains and develops the template library. Works closely with client teams during setup engagements to adapt templates to company-specific terminology and storage tools.
[ FIG. 05 — STANDARDS ]
How we maintain quality
Version-controlled templates
All Obiter templates carry version numbers and change notes. Clients receive updates when template content is revised and maintain control over which version their team uses.
Data handling protocols
Client documentation shared during engagements is handled under a written confidentiality agreement. We do not retain copies of client register data beyond the active engagement period.
Referral practice
We maintain a working list of qualified IP practitioners in Singapore and refer clients to relevant specialists when substantive filing or strategic matters arise during an engagement.
Post-engagement review
Every Setup Engagement closes with a structured review session and a thirty-day follow-up. Annual Programme clients receive a formal retrospective covering what changed across the year.
PDPA-aligned practices
Our data handling is aligned with Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act. We collect only what is needed for the engagement and do not share client information with third parties.
Written runbooks
Every setup engagement produces a written runbook that the operations team can follow independently. We write for operational clarity, not consultant dependency.
[ FIG. 06 — EXPERTISE ]
What we know well
Internal IP administration sits in the overlap between R&D operations and document management. Most of the effort is unglamorous: designing forms that inventors will actually fill in, structuring registers that remain readable six months after they were set up, writing review checklists that work without a specialist in the room. Obiter has focused on this specific territory since 2019 and has built a working knowledge of what makes internal IP documentation functional versus what makes it theoretical.
The companies we work with in Singapore tend to be in technology, biomedical devices or advanced manufacturing — sectors where invention disclosure volume is meaningful but where a full-time internal IP counsel is not yet justified. The gap between what these teams are generating and what they are capturing is often larger than management realises, and the fix is almost always operational rather than strategic.
Our template library is the most tangible output of six years of fieldwork. Each document in the pack has been tested against real intake workflows, revised based on feedback from inventors and operations leads, and refined to remove the ambiguities that cause forms to be ignored or completed inconsistently. The setup engagement and annual programme wrap that template library in a structured engagement model designed to move a team from gap to functioning workflow in a defined period.
We work in English and operate primarily within Singapore's business environment, which means the terminology, operational norms and referral relationships in our work are calibrated to this market. For companies with operations in multiple jurisdictions, we provide the Singapore-side administrative structure and coordinate with appropriate advisors elsewhere when needed.
[ FIG. 07 — NEXT STEP ]
Talk to us about your team's setup
If your R&D team is generating ideas faster than your documentation can keep up, we are a practical first call.
Get in Touch