Philippine Intellectual Property Law Reviewer

Vocabulary study cards covering patents, trademarks, unfair competition, and copyright under Philippine Intellectual Property Law.

Patent

An exclusive right that allows an inventor to exclude others from making, using, importing, or selling the product of the invention during the patent term.

Patentee

The person to whom the patent is granted and persons to whom it is subsequently assigned; also referred to as the patent holder, proprietor, or right holder.

Patentability Requirements

The three ordinary requirements an invention must meet to be patented: novelty, inventive step, and industrial applicability.

Novelty

The patentability requirement providing that an invention must be new and must not form part of the prior art.

Prior Art

Everything made available to the public anywhere in the world before the filing or priority date through written or oral disclosure, use, or other means.

Inventive Step

The condition wherein an invention is not obvious to a person skilled in the art at the filing or priority date.

Industrial Applicability

The condition wherein an invention can be produced and used in any industry.

Patentable Inventions

Subject matter eligible for patenting, specifically products, processes, computer-related inventions (excluding computer programs as such), and improvements of these.

First-to-File Rule (Sec. 29)

The statutory rule stating that where two or more persons independently make the same invention, the right generally belongs to the person with the earliest filing date or earliest priority date.

Patent Filing Date

The date on which a patent application is legally accepted at the patent office.

Non-Prejudicial Disclosure

Disclosures made within 12 months before the filing or priority date by the inventor, a person having the right to the patent, or an unauthorized third party that do not destroy novelty.

Non-Patentable Inventions

Subject matter excluded from patentability, such as discoveries, scientific theories, mathematical methods, abstract ideas, business methods without technical means, and computer programs as such.

Patent Infringement

Unauthorized making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing of a patented invention or product, or using a patented process, without the consent of the patent holder.

Literal Infringement

A form of patent infringement where the accused product or process falls directly within the literal meaning of the patent claims.

Doctrine of Equivalents

A test that finds patent infringement where an accused device performs substantially the same function, in substantially the same way, to achieve substantially the same result.

Rights of a Prior User (Sec. 73)

The right of a person who in good faith used the invention or made serious preparations to use it before the filing or priority date to continue that use within the territory where the patent has effect.

Voluntary Licensing

Authorization granted by a patent holder to another person permitting the production of the patented article.

Compulsory Licensing

A government authorization allowing another person to produce a patented product or use a patented process without the patent owner's consent on designated legal grounds.

Terms of Protection (Patent, Utility Model, Industrial Design)

20 years from filing for patents; 7 years from filing for utility models; and 5 years from filing renewable for two consecutive 5-year periods for industrial designs.

Trademark

A visible sign capable of distinguishing the goods of one enterprise from those of another.

Service Mark

A word, phrase, symbol, or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than goods.

Collective Mark

A sign used in relation to goods or services to indicate that they originate from members of an association or particular group.

Trade Name

The name under which an individual or company does business, also referred to as a business name or identifier.

Spectrum of Trademark Distinctiveness

The categories of trademark strength arranged from least to most distinctive: generic, descriptive, suggestive, arbitrary, and fanciful.

Generic Mark

A common name for a product or service that is not legally protectable as a trademark.

Descriptive Mark

A mark that merely describes the characteristics of goods or services, registrable only if it acquires secondary meaning or distinctiveness.

Suggestive Mark

A mark that hints at a quality or nature of the goods or services without directly describing them.

Arbitrary Mark

An existing word or image used in connection with goods or services entirely unrelated to its ordinary meaning, such as 'Apple' for electronic devices.

Fanciful Mark

A completely invented or made-up word with no prior dictionary meaning, such as 'Pepsodent' or 'Marlboro'.

Declaration of Actual Use (DAU)

A required filing accompanied by evidence proving that a registered or applied-for trademark is actively being used in commerce.

Declaration of Non-Use (DNU)

A formal declaration stating the recognized grounds and justification excusing the non-use of a trademark in commerce.

Well-Known Mark

A mark determined by competent authority to be well-known internationally and in the Philippines, protected whether or not it is registered locally.

Doctrine of Dilution

The lessening of a famous mark's capacity to identify and distinguish goods or services, regardless of the presence of competition or likelihood of confusion.

Idem Sonans

A test for confusing similarity providing that marks with different spellings may be deemed confusingly similar if they sound alike when spoken or read.

Dominancy Test

A trademark infringement test focusing on similarities in the prevalent or dominant features of competing marks that may cause confusion or deception.

Holistic Test

A trademark infringement test that considers the entirety of the marks as applied to the products, including labels, packaging, and commercial presentation.

Unfair Competition

Passing off or attempting to pass off one's goods or business as those of another, with the probable effect of deceiving the public.

Copyright

An incorporeal and intangible property right granted by law to the creator or originator of certain literary, artistic, scientific, and scholarly works for a statutory period.

Idea-Expression Dichotomy

The copyright principle that protection extends exclusively to the original expression of an idea, never to the idea itself.

Inception of Copyright Protection

The rule that copyright protection vests automatically by the sole fact of creation, regardless of mode, form of expression, content, quality, or purpose.

Economic Rights (Copyright)

The author's exclusive rights to authorize or prohibit reproduction, transformation, first public distribution, rental, public display, public performance, and communication to the public.

Moral Rights (Copyright)

The four personal rights of an author: the right of attribution, right to alteration, right against distortion, and right against misattribution.

Right of Attribution

The moral right to require authorship to be attributed to the creator, including having the creator's name indicated where practicable.

Right Against Distortion

The moral right to object to any distortion, mutilation, or other modification of a work that is prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation.

Fair Use

A statutory privilege to use copyrighted material in a reasonable manner without the copyright owner's consent for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

Four Factors of Fair Use

The statutory criteria: purpose and character of use, nature of the copyrighted work, amount and substantiality of the portion used, and effect on the potential market or value of the work.

First Sale Doctrine

The principle that an individual who knowingly purchases an authorized copy of a work obtains the legal right to sell, display, or otherwise dispose of that particular physical copy.

Public Domain (Copyright)

The status of a work whose protection has expired (author's lifetime plus 50 years), allowing it to be freely used without permission or license fees.

Commissioned Work Ownership

The legal allocation wherein the creator retains copyright ownership unless stipulated otherwise in writing, while the person commissioning the work owns the physical work.

Acquisition of Intellectual Property Rights

The statutory methods of securing protection: patents through application and grant; trademarks through registration; and copyrights through creation.