William Lye

Mr William Lye OAM QC is a barrister practising at the Victorian Bar and is admitted to practice in all Australian States and Territories. His areas of legal practice include general commercial and corporate law, copyright and trademarks, computer and internet related matters, cross border disputes, and international commercial arbitration.

Mr Lye has a Bachelor of Science (Computers), Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws (specialising in Intellectual Property) from Monash University. He also has a Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation from the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship at Swinburne. He is currently Adjunct Professor within the Faculty of Business and Law at Swinburne University of Technology.

He is an accredited mediator and an arbitrator on the foreign panel of the Shanghai International Arbitration Centre, which acts as an independent arbitration institute to resolve commercial disputes. He is also on the panel of arbitrators of the Czech Arbitration Centre dealing with disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Disputes Resolution Policy (UDRP) established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Mr Lye serves as a national board member of The Order of Australia Association Limited, and is also on the Victoria Branch of The Order of Australia Association.

He is a founding member and the Immediate Past National Vice President of the Asian Australian Lawyers Association. He is also one of the Patrons of the North American Australian Lawyers Alliance Incorporated.

On Australia Day 2017, Mr Lye was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for ‘service to the law, to business, and to the promotion of cultural diversity’.

In the same year, at the 2017 Australian Law Awards, Mr Lye won the Barrister of the Year Award and the Lawyers Weekly Excellence Award.

In 2018 Mr Lye was the first barrister of Malaysian Chinese descent appointed Senior Counsel in Australia.