At the office of the Intellectual Property

in the Philippines, there are several

Friends share all things.
—PYTHAGORAS categories wherein a creator or
innovator can register their creation
Today’s pirates operate not on the under.
high seas but on the Internet.
—–RECORDING INDUSTRY
ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
Copyright is the legal protection
extended to the owner of the rights in an
original work.

“Original work” refers to every

production in the literary, scientific and
artistic domain. Among the literary and
Intellectual property is a term used to artistic works enumerated in the IP Code
describe works of the mind—such as includes books and other writings,
art, books, films, formulas, musical works, films, paintings and other
inventions, music, and processes— works, and computer programs.
that are distinct and owned or
created by a single person or group.

• Books, pamphlets, articles and

other writings
• Periodicals and newspapers
• Lectures, sermons, addresses,
dissertations prepared for oral
delivery, whether or not reduced in
All these creations are protected by writing or other material form
the law, ensuring that the people • Letters
behind it are given due recognition • Dramatic or dramatico-musical
or remuneration for their effort. compositions; choreographic
works or entertainment in dumb
shows
• Musical compositions, with or
• Copyright without words
o Protects authored works • Works of drawing, painting,
• Patent architecture, sculpture, engraving,
o Protects inventions lithography or other work of art;
• Trademark models or designs for works of art
o Protects a business’ brand identity
 • Original ornamental designs or
models for articles of manufacture,
whether or not registrable as an
industrial design, and other works
of applied art
• Illustrations, maps, plans, sketches, In case of anonymous or
charts and three-dimensional
pseudonymous works, copyright
works relative to geography,
protection shall last for 50 years
topography, architecture or
science from the date on which the work
• Drawings or plastic works of a was first lawfully published. If the
scientific or technical character work was not published, it shall be
• Photographic works including protected for 50 years counted
works produced by a process from the creation of the work.
analogous to photography; lantern
slides
• Audiovisual works and
cinematographic works and work
produced by a process analogous
Copyright infringement - is the use
to cinematography or any process
or production of copyright-protected
for making audio-visual recordings
material without the permission of
• Pictorial illustrations and
the copyright holder
advertisements
• Computer programs • Individuals and companies -
• Other literary, scholarly, scientific register for copyright protection
and artistic works. to ensure profit from their efforts
– may be granted permission to
use their works through
licensing arrangements or
may purchase the works from
In the Philippines, copyright the copyright holder
• Other parties engage in
protection for artistic, literary and
copyright infringement
derivative works lasts during the
because of high price
lifetime of the author plus 50
years after the author’s death.
This term of protection also
applies to following works. In the
case of joint authorship, the
economic rights shall be protected The use of copyrights to protect
during the lifetime of the last computer software raises many
surviving author plus 50 years complicated issues of interpretation.
after such author’s death. • For example, a software
manufacturer can observe the
operation of a competitor’s
 copyrighted program and then In its defense, Xio argued that because it only
create a program that accomplishes copied the rules and basic functionality of the
the same result and performs in the game, and not its more original components,
same manner. there was no infringement. While the court
agreed that the fundamental rules and basic
• To prove infringement, the copyright
functionality of the game could not be
holder must show a striking protected, it pointed out that many other
resemblance between its software elements of the game had been copied,
and the new software that could be including the color, shape, and number of
explained only by copying. game bricks; how the pieces were formed from
However, if the new software’s the game bricks; and the manner in which the
manufacturer can establish that it pieces moved.
developed the program on its own, In addition, the court noted that screen shots
of the games viewed side by side were nearly
without any knowledge of the
identical. The court ruled that Xio was
existing program, there is no
permanently banned from selling, displaying,
infringement.
or promoting the Mino game.

A Patent is a grant issued by the

government through the Intellectual
Property Office of the Philippines.
It is an exclusive right granted for a
product, process or an improvement
Tetris is a very popular computer game that was of a product or process which is new,
created in 1984. Over the years, versions of Tetris
inventive and useful. This exclusive
have been developed and licensed to run on
Nintendo’s Game Boy, DS, and Wii; Sony’s right gives the inventor the right to
PlayStation; Apple’s iPod, iTouch, and iPhone; exclude others from making, using,
and Android phones. or selling the product of his invention
during the life of the patent.
A patent has a term of protection of
twenty (20) years providing an
inventor significant commercial gain.
In return, the patent owner must
share the full description of the
invention.

Xio Interactive was a small company formed for

the purpose of creating an unlicensed iPhone
version of Tetris—named Mino. However, shortly
after Xio posted its Mino app to the Apple iTunes
store, Tetris filed a copyright infringement
lawsuit against the company.
 For the purpose of this clause, salts,
esters, ethers, polymorphs,
metabolites, pure form, particle size,
isomers, mixtures of isomers,
complexes, combinations, and other
derivatives of a known substance
Patentable inventions are any
shall be considered to be the same
technical solution of a problem in any
substance, unless they differ
field of human activity that
significantly in properties with
is new, involves an inventive step, and
regard to efficacy.
is industrially applicable. Patents may
be granted to technical solutions
such as an invention, machines, 2. Schemes, rules and methods of
devices, processes, or an performing mental acts, playing
improvement of any of the foregoing. games or doing business, and
The technical solution must be novel, programs for computers.
innovative, and industrially useful. In
order for a technical solution to be 3. Methods for treatment of the
granted a patent, the inventor must human or animal body by surgery or
file an application to the Bureau of therapy and diagnostic methods
Patents, which will examine, and in practiced on the human or animal
some cases, grant its approval. body. This provision shall not apply
to products and composition for use
in any of these methods.

4. Plant varieties or animal breeds or

essentially biological process for the
production of plants or animals. This
The following are the non-patentable
inventions: provision shall not apply to
microorganisms and non-biological
1. Discoveries, scientific theories and and microbiological processes.
Provisions under this subsection shall
mathematical methods, and in the
not preclude Congress to consider
case of drugs and medicines, the
the enactment of a law providing sui
mere discovery of a new form or new
generis protection of plant varieties
property of a known substance which
and animal breeds and a system of
does not result in the enhancement of
community intellectual rights
the known efficacy of that substance,
or the mere discovery of any new protection:
property or new use for a known
substance, or the mere use of a 5. Aesthetic creations; and
known process unless such known
process results in a new product that 6. Anything which is contrary to
employs at least one new reactant. public order or morality.
 using the same or similar marks on
identical or related goods and services.
A trademark is a word, symbol,
Before applying for trademark
picture, sound, or color used by a
registration, it would help if you conduct
business to identify goods.
a search in the trademarks database to
A service mark is a mark identifying determine if there are identical or
a service. similar marks that would prevent the
registration of your mark. This is to
By granting a trademark or service prevent future conflicts with marks that
mark, a government gives a are already registered or with earlier
company the right to use it and the filing dates.
right to prevent other companies
A trademark can be protected in
from using it.
perpetuity if regularly monitored and
Through the use of a trademark, a properly maintained.
company can establish a “brand The period of protection is ten (10) years
name.” from the date of issuance and is
renewable for a period of ten (10) years
Society benefits from branding
at a time.
because branding allows consumers
to have more confidence in the
quality of the products they
purchase.

Companies strive to ensure their

marks are used as adjectives rather This section discusses several issues that apply to
than nouns or verbs. intellectual property and information
• One way they do this is through
technology, including plagiarism, reverse engineering,
advertising
open-source code, and cybersquatting.
• Companies protect their
trademarks is by contacting those
who are misusing them
o Adobe has responded to Web posts
about “photoshopping images” by
posting this follow-up message: “The
Plagiarism is the act of stealing
Photoshop trademark must never be
used as a common verb or as a noun. someone’s ideas or words and passing
The Photoshop trademark should them off as one’s own. The explosion of
always be capitalized and should never electronic content and the growth of the
be used in possessive form, or as a slang Web have made it easy to cut and paste
term”
paragraphs into term papers and other
documents without proper citation or
quotation marks.

A trademark can be protected through Despite codes of ethics in place that

clearly define plagiarism and prescribe
registration. Registration gives the
penalties ranging from no credit on a
trademark owner the exclusive right to paper to expulsion, many students still
use the mark and to prevent others from
do not understand what constitutes
plagiarism. Some students believe that
all electronic content is in the public • Process of taking something
domain, while other students knowingly
apart in order to
commit plagiarism either because they
feel pressure to achieve a high GPA or o Understand it
because they are too lazy or pressed for
time to do original work.
o Build a copy of it
o Improve it
plagiarism detection systems allow
teachers, corporations, law firms, and • Applied to computer
publishers to check for matching text in o Hardware
different documents as a means of
identifying potential plagiarism. o Software
• Convert a program code to a
higher-level design
• Convert an application that ran
on one vendor’s database to
run on another’s

Turnitin, a software product developed by California-based

iParadigms, supports 15 languages and is used by over 10,000
educational institutions around the world. It uses three
primary databases for content matching with over 24 billion
Web pages, some 300 million archived student papers, and • to retrieve the source code of a
120 million articles from over 110,000 journals, periodicals,
and books. iThenticate is available from the same company program because the source
that created Turnitin, but it is designed to meet the needs of code was lost;
members of the information industry, such as publishers,
research facilities, legal firms, government agencies, and • to study how the program
financial institutions. performs certain operations;
• to improve the performance of
Steps to combat student plagiarism a program;
• to fix a bug (correct an error in
✓ Help students understand what
the program when the source
constitutes plagiarism
code is not available)
✓ Show students how to document
• to identify malicious content in
Web pages
a program such as a virus or ;
✓ Schedule major writing
• to adapt a program written for
assignments in portions
use with one microprocessor
✓ Tell students that you know about
for use with another.
Internet paper mills
(online databases that offer
research papers on thousands of
topics)
✓ Educate students about
plagiarism detection services
Open-source code is any program Cybersquatting is registering,
whose source code is made available selling or using a domain name with
for use or modification, as users or the intent of profiting from the
other developers see fit. goodwill of someone else's
trademark.
The basic premise behind open-
source code is that when many It generally refers to the practice of
programmers can read, redistribute, buying up domain names that use the
and modify a program’s code, the names of existing businesses with
software improves. the intent to sell the names for a profit
to those businesses
Programs with open-source code can
be adapted to meet new needs, and • So basically, when somebody
bugs can be rapidly identified and buys a domain name like for
fixed. example tip.com, with the sole
purpose of selling it back to
Open-source code advocates
someone who wants it or really
believe that this process produces
needs it.
better software than the traditional
• Usually, the domain that you buy
closed model.
it
A common use of open-source • When you buy it to cybersquatted
software is to move data from one or cybersquatting site, you can
application to another and to extract, pay thousands.
transform, and load business data
into large databases.
Two frequently cited reasons for
Summary
Intellectual property is protected by
using open-source software:
➢ Copyrights
• it provides a better solution to ➢ Patents
➢ Trade mark
a specific business problem
• it costs less Plagiarism is stealing and passing off the ideas and
words of another as one’s own

Reverse engineering

➢ Process of breaking something down

➢ In order to understand, build copy, or
improve it

Open-source code

➢ Made available for use or modification as

users or other developers see fit

Cybersquatting

➢ Registration of a domain name by an

unaffiliated party
 Who must comply?
Companies with 250 employees or 1000
data subjects.
The processing of all types of personal
The right of an individual not to have information and to any natural and
private information about himself juridical persons involved in personal
disclosed, and to live freely from information processing shall comply to
surveillance and intrusion. the law

-https://www.privacy.gov.ph/ -page 24 of the Data Privacy and Cybercrime

Prevention in the Philippine Digital Age
Why Data Privacy is Important?
What is Data Subject?
When data that should be kept
private gets in the wrong hands, bad Data subject refers to an individual
things can happen. whose personal information is
processed.
• A data breach at a government
agency can, for example, put top- It is the customer whom we serviced.
secret information in the hands of
What to protect?
an enemy state.
• A breach at a corporation can put Offline Identity - Identification cards
proprietary data in the hands of a we use on a day-to-day basis to
competitor. authenticate identity in the physical
• A breach at a school could put world.
students’ Personal Identifiable
Online identity is a social identity that
Information (PII) in the hands of
an internet user establishes in online
criminals who could commit
communities and websites.
identity theft.
• A breach at a hospital or doctor’s Personal Identifiable
office can put Personal Health Information
Information (PHI) in the hands of
those who might misuse it. Personal Identifiable Information
refers to any information whether
recorded in a material form or not,
from which the identity of an
“An act protecting individual individual is apparent or can be
personal information in information reasonably and directly ascertained
and communications systems in the by the entity holding the information
government and the private sector, when put together with other
creating for this purpose a National information would directly and
Privacy Commission, and for other certainly identity an individual.
purposes” -Page 15 of the Data Privacy and Cybercrime Prevention
in the Philippine Digital Age
Personal Information use of personal information,
including a person or
Some personal information that is organization who instructs
protected: another person or organization to
collect, hold, process, use,
1.Full Name
transfer or disclose personal
2.Present Address information on his or her behalf.
2. Personal
3.Permanent Address Information Processor (PIP)
4.Home Number - refers to any natural or juridical
person or any other body to whom
5.Cellphone Number a PIC may outsource or instruct
6.Email Address the processing of personal data
pertaining to a data subject.
7.Mother’s Maiden Name
8.Job Position What is Consent?
Consent means giving data subjects
genuine choice and control over how
Sensitive Personal Information a Personal Information Controller
(PIC) uses their data. Data subjects
Sensitive personal information refers
may be able to refuse consent and
to personal information:
may be able to withdraw consent
(1) About an individual’s race, ethnic easily at any time.
origin, marital status, age, color, and
religious, philosophical or political
affiliations;
(2) About an individual’s health,
education, genetic or sexual life of a
person, or to any proceeding for any Under R.A. 10173, your personal data
offense committed or alleged to have is treated almost literally in the same
been committed by such person, the way as your own personal property.
disposal of such proceedings, or the Thus, it should never be collected,
sentence of any court in such processed, and stored by any
organization without your explicit
proceedings;
consent, unless otherwise provided
Who Controls the data? by law. Information controllers
usually solicit your consent through a
1. Personal consent form. Aside from protecting
Information Controller (PIC) you against unfair means of personal
- refers to a person or data collection, this right also
organization who controls the requires personal information
collection, holding, processing or controllers (PICs) to notify you if your
data have been compromised, in a • Manner by which they were
timely manner. processed.
• Reasons for disclosure to
As a data subject, you have the right
recipients, if there were any.
to be informed that your personal
• Information on automated
data will be, are being, or were,
collected and processed. systems where your data is or
may be available, and how it
The Right to be Informed is the most may affect you.
basic right as it empowers you as a • Date when your data was last
data subject to consider other actions accessed and modified
to protect your data privacy and • The identity and address of the
assert your other privacy rights. personal information controller.

This is your right to find out whether You can exercise your right to object
an organization holds any personal if the personal data processing
data about you and if so, gain involved is based on consent or on
“reasonable access” to them. legitimate interest. When you object
Through this right, you may also ask or withhold your consent, the PIC
them to provide you with a written should no longer process the
description of the kind of information personal data, unless the processing
they have about you as well as their is pursuant to a subpoena, for
purpose/s for holding them. obvious purposes (contract,
Under the Data Privacy Act of 2012, employer-employee relationship,
you have a right to obtain from an etc.) or a result of a legal obligation.
organization a copy of any In case there is any change or
information relating to you that they amendment to the information
have on their computer database previously given to you, you should
and/or manual filing system. It be notified and given an opportunity
should be provided in an easy-to- to withhold consent.
access format, accompanied with a
full explanation executed in plain
language.
You may demand to access the
Under the law, you have the right to
following:
suspend, withdraw, or order the
• The contents of your personal blocking, removal, or destruction of
data that were processed. your personal data. You can exercise
• The sources from which they this right upon discovery and
were obtained. substantial proof of the following:
• Names and addresses of the
recipients of your data.
1. Your personal data is incomplete,
outdated, false, or unlawfully
obtained. You may claim compensation if you
2. It is being used for purposes you suffered damages due to inaccurate,
did not authorize. incomplete, outdated, false,
3. The data is no longer necessary unlawfully obtained, or unauthorized
for the purposes for which they use of personal data, considering any
were collected. violation of your rights and freedoms
4. You decided to withdraw consent, as the data subject.
or you object to its processing and
there is no overriding legal
ground for its processing.
5. The data concerns information
prejudicial to the data subject —
unless justified by freedom of
speech, of expression, or of the If you feel that your personal
press; or otherwise, authorized information has been misused,
(by a court of law) maliciously disclosed, or improperly
6. The processing is unlawful. disposed, or that any of your data
7. The personal information privacy rights have been violated,
controller, or the personal you have a right to file a complaint
information processor, violated with the NPC.
your rights as a data subject.

You have the right to dispute and

have corrected any inaccuracy or
error in the data a personal
information controller (PIC) holds
about you. The PIC should act on it
immediately and accordingly unless
the request is vexatious or
unreasonable. Once corrected, the
PIC should ensure that your access
and receipt of both new and
retracted information. PICs should
also furnish third parties with said
information, should you request it.