Question & AnswerQ&A (Republic Act No. 8293)
The official title is the "Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines."
The IPO administers and implements state policies on intellectual property, examines applications for patents, trademarks, registers technology transfer arrangements, publishes granted intellectual property rights, adjudicates contested proceedings, and coordinates with government and private sectors to strengthen intellectual property rights protection.
The right to a patent belongs to the inventor, his heirs, or assigns. When two or more persons jointly made an invention, the right to the patent belongs to them jointly.
Any technical solution to a problem in any field of human activity which is new, involves an inventive step, and is industrially applicable is patentable. This includes products, processes, or improvements thereof.
Non-patentable inventions include scientific theories, mathematical methods, schemes or methods of performing mental acts or business, methods of treatment of the human or animal body, plant varieties or animal breeds (except microorganisms and microbiological processes), aesthetic creations, and anything contrary to public order or morality.
The term of a patent is twenty (20) years from the filing date of the application.
A patent confers the exclusive right to make, use, offer for sale, sell, or import the patented product or use the patented process, and to assign or transfer the patent and conclude licensing contracts.
Limitations include using a patented product already put on the market by the owner, private and non-commercial use, experimentation, preparation of medicine by a medical professional, and use in vessels or vehicles temporarily in the Philippines.
If two or more persons independently invent the same invention, the patent right belongs to the person who files the application first or has the earliest priority date.
Any person who believes they will be damaged by the registration of a mark may file an opposition within thirty (30) days after the mark’s publication in the IPO Gazette.
Grounds include marks consisting of immoral or scandalous matter, national symbols without permission, marks identical or confusingly similar to existing registered marks, misleading marks, generic signs, technical shapes, color alone unless defined by form, or marks contrary to public order or morality.
A certificate of registration remains in force for ten (10) years and may be renewed for successive ten-year periods upon payment of fees and compliance with requirements.
Copyright owners have the exclusive rights to reproduce the work, create derivative works, distribute copies, perform or display the work publicly, and communicate the work to the public.
Works protected include original literary and artistic works such as books, periodicals, music, films, paintings, computer programs, and other original scholarly, scientific, or artistic works.
Moral rights include the rights to claim authorship, to object to any distortion or mutilation of the work prejudicial to the author’s reputation, and to restrain the use of their name on any work not created by them.
Penalties include imprisonment from one (1) year to nine (9) years with fines ranging from Fifty thousand pesos (P50,000) to One million five hundred thousand pesos (P1,500,000), depending on the number of offenses.
Copyright protection lasts for the lifetime of the author and fifty (50) years after the author's death.
The patent owner can seek civil action for damages, attorney's fees, injunctions to stop infringement, and disposal or destruction of infringing goods. Criminal penalties also apply for repeated infringement.
It refers to contracts or agreements involving the transfer of systematic knowledge for manufacturing, applying processes, rendering services, including management contracts, and licensing intellectual property rights.
Clauses that impose obligations to acquire from specific sources, fix resale prices, restrict production volumes, prohibit the use of competitive technologies, restrict research and development, or prevent contesting patents are considered prima facie adverse to competition and trade.