S'pore slide-&-swing door inventor wins lawsuit against rivals after private investigator conducts 'trap purchase'

On Dec. 5, Singapore’s High Court found for a Singaporean inventor who had accused business rivals of passing off a similar product to his own patented version.

A sliding (and swinging) doors moment

Ng Say Keong, sole proprietor of S & K Solid Wood Doors, sued two Singapore-registered companies, Jia Le Aluminium and 9 Power Aluminium & Glass, in 2024 for passing off doors they were selling as those designed by Ng, as reported by The Straits Times.

Ng is the inventor and designer of the SK Door, which ST described as a type of slide-and-swing door, meant to conserve space in compact homes.

Ng applied for a patent for his design in 2014, receiving the patent in 2015 and named it the “SK Door” after his initials.

According to court documents, Ng said that his company has become known for the door, having sold over 350,000 to date.

The defendants

Both Jia Le and 9 Power have the same registered office address, shareholders and directors, and sell the same type of aluminium products, such as doors and window frames, although they were registered in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

The directors of both companies, Koh Tiam Hock and Lim Swee Kiat, are also directors of a Malaysia-registered company, Supreme Door Aluminium & Glass Sdn Bhd, which was incorporated by a former employee of Ng’s S & K Solid Wood Doors, Goh Song Guan.

The Malaysian company, Supreme Doors, is the manufacturer and exporter of another slide-and-swing door, which it calls the “SD Door”.

Renovation revelation

The suit emanates from an incident in 2023 where an existing customer of Ng’s alerted him to an incident where the customer’s relative had renovated their home and had been sold doors by employees of Jia Le, and 9 Power had introduced themselves as “SK Doors”.

After the installation, Ng had inspected the doors and found that they were not SK Doors, but were SD Doors.

Ng then hired a private investigator to look into the matter and conduct a "trap purchase".

The investigator had gone to the defendant’s showroom and met an employee of 9 Power, who offered to sell the investigator an “SK Door” for S$330.

The private investigator was also shown an SK door in the defendant’s showroom that was being used as a toilet door.

However, the door also had several different numerically labelled sample finishes, such as dark wood grain or marble, on the door, which the judge would later say indicated that the door was being used as a sample, rather than a “mere toilet door”.

After purchasing the doors for S$270, Ng inspected them and found that they were not SK Doors.

Infringement and passing off

Based on the two incidents, Ng sued Jia Le and 9 Power for infringing on his patent and passing off his products as theirs.

Justice Dedar Singh Gill, later found that while Ng’s patent was valid, the defendants had not infringed upon it with their own SD Doors.

He wrote that there were three elements that a claimant must prove in order to succeed in an action for passing off: goodwill in a business, misrepresentation, and damage, and found that all three elements had been met.

Three elements

In terms of goodwill, the judge wrote that Ng had used the SK name “continuously and extensively” for nearly two decades, both online and offline.

He also found that the misrepresentation element was satisfied, citing incidents such as an SK Door being installed in the defendant’s showroom instead of an SD Door, as well as the defendant’s employees telling potential customers they were from SK Doors.

An additional point in the case was the naming of the “SD Door”, which Ng’s former employee Goh claimed was named after the Malaysian company that produces it, “Supreme Door MY”.

However, Ng’s company’s product brochures and online websites gave his SK Doors the product prefix “SD” since before the establishment of Supreme Door, something that Goh would have been aware of as a former employee.

The judge wrote that he found it “implausible” that the usage of “SD” was a coincidence.

Regarding damage, the defendants said that none had been suffered as Ng’s private investigator had paid the price of and received an SD Door, something that the judge said “misses the point”.

He wrote that the defendants had likely damaged Ng’s S & K Solid Wood Doors' goodwill through their conduct, although he did not consider possible damage caused by what Ng alleged were inferior SD Doors.

The judge did not decide on damages, however, saying that he would hear the parties on costs separately. That hearing will take place in 2026.

Top image via eLitigation.sg & Terence Ong/Wikipedia