Category Archives: Intellectual Property

I stumbled on Talkin’ Tech’s post, through PinoyBlog, about sweet justice meted by WordPress for someone plagiarizing his blog. Plagiarism, in legal terms, is intellectual piracy or copyright infringement (added: there’s a discussion at The Ignatian Perspective on how plagiarism and infringement are distinguished). Copyright infringement was previously governed by Presidential Decree No. 49. At present, all laws dealing with the protection of intellectual property rights have been consolidated under Republic Act No. 8293.

Infringement of a copyright is a trespass on a private domain owned and occupied by the owner of the copyright, and, therefore, protected by law. Infringement of copyright, or piracy, which is a synonymous term in this connection, consists in the doing by any person, without the consent of the owner of the copyright, of anything the sole right to do which is conferred by statute on the owner of the copyright.

(Read the full discussion at the e-Legal Forum).

I stumbled on an article entitled “The Meaning of Life for Dummies” through reddit. I’m reminded of a site discussing its brush with intellectual property litigation for using the “For Dummies” phrase in “Ulysses for Dummies” (read here). There’s also a similar and more recent issue involving Jason Calacanis who used the blog title “Super Bowl guide for dummies”, as noted at the Trademark Blog (here and here) and the BuzzMachine. Read more »