Pearl & Dean v. Shoemart (Case Digest. G.R. No. 148222)
G.R. No. 148222. August 15, 2003. PEARL & DEAN (PHIL.), INCORPORATED (P & D), Petitioner, vs. SHOEMART, INCORPORATED (SMI), and NORTH EDSA MARKETING, INCORPORATED (NEMI), Respondents. CORONA, J.:
FACTUAL ANTECEDENTS: Plaintiff-appellant Pearl and Dean (Phil.), Inc. is a corporation engaged in the manufacture of advertising display units simply referred to as light boxes. These units utilize specially printed posters sandwiched between plastic sheets and illuminated with back lights. Pearl and Dean was able to secure a Certificate of Copyright Registration dated January 20, 1981 over these illuminated display units. The advertising light boxes were marketed under the trademark "Poster Ads". The application for registration of the trademark was filed with the Bureau of Patents, Trademarks and Technology Transfer on June 20, 1983, but was approved only on September 12, 1988, per Registration No. 41165. From 1981 to about 1988, Pearl and Dean employed the services of Metro Industrial Services to manufacture its advertising displays.
Sometime in 1985, Pearl and Dean negotiated with defendant-appellant Shoemart, Inc. (SMI) for the lease and installation of the light boxes in SM City North Edsa. Since SM City North Edsa was under construction at that time, SMI offered as an alternative, SM Makati and SM Cubao, to which Pearl and Dean agreed. On September 11, 1985, Pearl and Dean’s General Manager, Rodolfo Vergara, submitted for signature the contracts covering SM Cubao and SM Makati to SMI’s Advertising Promotions and Publicity Division Manager, Ramonlito Abano. Only the contract for SM Makati, however, was returned signed. On October 4, 1985, Vergara wrote Abano inquiring about the other contract and reminding him that their agreement for installation of light boxes was not only for its SM Makati branch, but also for SM Cubao. SMI did not bother to reply.
Instead, in a letter dated January 14, 1986, SMI’s house counsel informed Pearl and Dean that it was rescinding the contract for SM Makati due to non-performance of the terms thereof. In his reply dated February 17, 1986, Vergara protested the unilateral action of SMI, saying it was without basis. In the same letter, he pushed for the signing of the contract for SM Cubao.
Two years later, Metro Industrial Services, the company formerly contracted by Pearl and Dean to make its display units, offered to construct light boxes for Shoemart’s chain of stores. SMI approved the proposal and ten (10) light boxes were subsequently fabricated by Metro Industrial for SMI. After its contract with Metro Industrial was terminated, SMI engaged the services of EYD Rainbow Advertising Corporation to make the light boxes. Some 300 units were fabricated in 1991. These were delivered on a staggered basis and installed at SM Megamall and SM City.
Sometime in 1989, Pearl and Dean, received reports that exact copies of its light boxes were installed at SM City and in the fastfood section of SM Cubao. Upon investigation, Pearl and Dean found out that aside from the two (2) reported SM branches, light boxes similar to those it manufactures were also installed in two (2) other SM stores. It further discovered that defendant-appellant North Edsa Marketing Inc. (NEMI), through its marketing arm, Prime Spots Marketing Services, was set up primarily to sell advertising space in lighted display units located in SMI’s different branches. Pearl and Dean noted that NEMI is a sister company of SMI.
In the light of its discoveries, Pearl and Dean sent a letter dated December 11, 1991 to both SMI and NEMI enjoining them to cease using the subject light boxes and to remove the same from SMI’s establishments. It also demanded the discontinued use of the trademark "Poster Ads," and the payment to Pearl and Dean of compensatory damages in the amount of Twenty Million Pesos (P20,000,000.00).
Upon receipt of the demand letter, SMI suspended the leasing of two hundred twenty-four (224) light boxes and NEMI took down its advertisements for "Poster Ads" from the lighted display units in SMI’s stores. Claiming that both SMI and NEMI failed to meet all its demands, Pearl and Dean filed this instant case for infringement of trademark and copyright, unfair competition and damages.
In denying the charges hurled against it, SMI maintained that it independently developed its poster panels using commonly known techniques and available technology, without notice of or reference to Pearl and Dean’s copyright. SMI noted that the registration of the mark "Poster Ads" was only for stationeries such as letterheads, envelopes, and the like. Besides, according to SMI, the word "Poster Ads" is a generic term which cannot be appropriated as a trademark, and, as such, registration of such mark is invalid. It also stressed that Pearl and Dean is not entitled to the reliefs prayed for in its complaint since its advertising display units contained no copyright notice, in violation of Section 27 of P.D. 49. SMI alleged that Pearl and Dean had no cause of action against it and that the suit was purely intended to malign SMI’s good name. On this basis, SMI, aside from praying for the dismissal of the case, also counterclaimed for moral, actual and exemplary damages and for the cancellation of Pearl and Dean’s Certification of Copyright Registration No. PD-R-2558 dated January 20, 1981 and Certificate of Trademark Registration No. 4165 dated September 12, 1988.
NEMI, for its part, denied having manufactured, installed or used any advertising display units, nor having engaged in the business of advertising. It repleaded SMI’s averments, admissions and denials and prayed for similar reliefs and counterclaims as SMI."
The RTC of Makati City decided in favor of P & D.
On appeal, however, the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court. Dissatisfied, petitioner P & D filed the instant petition assigning the following errors for the Court’s consideration:
ISSUES: In resolving this very interesting case, we are challenged once again to put into proper perspective four main concerns of intellectual property law — patents, copyrights, trademarks and unfair competition arising from infringement of any of the first three. We shall focus then on the following issues:
(1) if the engineering or technical drawings of an advertising display unit (light box) are granted copyright protection (copyright certificate of registration) by the National Library, is the light box depicted in such engineering drawings ipso facto also protected by such copyright?
(2) or should the light box be registered separately and protected by a patent issued by the Bureau of Patents Trademarks and Technology Transfer (now Intellectual Property Office) — in addition to the copyright of the engineering drawings?
(3) can the owner of a registered trademark legally prevent others from using such trademark if it is a mere abbreviation of a term descriptive of his goods, services or business?
HELD: WHEREFORE, the petition is hereby DENIED and the decision of the Court of Appeals dated May 22, 2001 is AFFIRMED in toto.
ON THE ISSUE OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT: Although petitioner’s copyright certificate was entitled "Advertising Display Units" (which depicted the box-type electrical devices), its claim of copyright infringement cannot be sustained.
Copyright, in the strict sense of the term, is purely a statutory right. Being a mere statutory grant, the rights are limited to what the statute confers. It may be obtained and enjoyed only with respect to the subjects and by the persons, and on terms and conditions specified in the statute. Accordingly, it can cover only the works falling within the statutory enumeration or description.
P & D secured its copyright under the classification class "O" work. This being so, petitioner’s copyright protection extended only to the technical drawings and not to the light box itself because the latter was not at all in the category of "prints, pictorial illustrations, advertising copies, labels, tags and box wraps." The light box was not a literary or artistic piece which could be copyrighted under the copyright law. And no less clearly, neither could the lack of statutory authority to make the light box copyrightable be remedied by the simplistic act of entitling the copyright certificate issued by the National Library as "Advertising Display Units."In fine, if SMI and NEMI reprinted P & D’s technical drawings for sale to the public without license from P & D, then no doubt they would have been guilty of copyright infringement. But this was not the case. SMI’s and NEMI’s acts complained of by P & D were to have units similar or identical to the light box illustrated in the technical drawings manufactured by Metro and EYD Rainbow Advertising, for leasing out to different advertisers. Was this an infringement of petitioner’s copyright over the technical drawings? We do not think so.
ON THE ISSUE OF PATENT INFRINGEMENT: This brings us to the next point: if, despite its manufacture and commercial use of the light boxes without license from petitioner, private respondents cannot be held legally liable for infringement of P & D’s copyright over its technical drawings of the said light boxes, should they be liable instead for infringement of patent? We do not think so either.
For some reason or another, petitioner never secured a patent for the light boxes. It therefore acquired no patent rights which could have protected its invention, if in fact it really was. And because it had no patent, petitioner could not legally prevent anyone from manufacturing or commercially using the contraption.
To be able to effectively and legally preclude others from copying and profiting from the invention, a patent is a primordial requirement. No patent, no protection. The ultimate goal of a patent system is to bring new designs and technologies into the public domain through disclosure. Ideas, once disclosed to the public without the protection of a valid patent, are subject to appropriation without significant restraint.
On one side of the coin is the public which will benefit from new ideas; on the other are the inventors who must be protected.
Therefore, not having gone through the arduous examination for patents, the petitioner cannot exclude others from the manufacture, sale or commercial use of the light boxes on the sole basis of its copyright certificate over the technical drawings.
Stated otherwise, what petitioner seeks is exclusivity without any opportunity for the patent office (IPO) to scrutinize the light box’s eligibility as a patentable invention. The irony here is that, had petitioner secured a patent instead, its exclusivity would have been for 17 years only. But through the simplified procedure of copyright-registration with the National Library — without undergoing the rigor of defending the patentability of its invention before the IPO and the public — the petitioner would be protected for 50 years. This situation could not have been the intention of the law.
ON THE ISSUE OF TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT: This issue concerns the use by respondents of the mark "Poster Ads" which petitioner’s president said was a contraction of "poster advertising." P & D was able to secure a trademark certificate for it, but one where the goods specified were "stationeries such as letterheads, envelopes, calling cards and newsletters."22 Petitioner admitted it did not commercially engage in or market these goods. On the contrary, it dealt in electrically operated backlit advertising units and the sale of advertising spaces thereon, which, however, were not at all specified in the trademark certificate.
Under the circumstances, the Court of Appeals correctly cited Faberge Inc. vs. Intermediate Appellate Court,23 where we, invoking Section 20 of the old Trademark Law, ruled that "the certificate of registration issued by the Director of Patents can confer (upon petitioner) the exclusive right to use its own symbol only to those goods specified in the certificate, subject to any conditions and limitations specified in the certificate x x x. One who has adopted and used a trademark on his goods does not prevent the adoption and use of the same trademark by others for products which are of a different description."24 Faberge, Inc. was correct and was in fact recently reiterated in Canon Kabushiki Kaisha vs. Court of Appeals.25
Assuming arguendo that "Poster Ads" could validly qualify as a trademark, the failure of P & D to secure a trademark registration for specific use on the light boxes meant that there could not have been any trademark infringement since registration was an essential element thereof.1âwphi1
ON THE ISSUE OF UNFAIR COMPETITION: If at all, the cause of action should have been for unfair competition, a situation which was possible even if P & D had no registration. However, while the petitioner’s complaint in the RTC also cited unfair competition, the trial court did not find private respondents liable therefor. Petitioner did not appeal this particular point; hence, it cannot now revive its claim of unfair competition.
But even disregarding procedural issues, we nevertheless cannot hold respondents guilty of unfair competition.
By the nature of things, there can be no unfair competition under the law on copyrights although it is applicable to disputes over the use of trademarks. Even a name or phrase incapable of appropriation as a trademark or tradename may, by long and exclusive use by a business (such that the name or phrase becomes associated with the business or product in the mind of the purchasing public), be entitled to protection against unfair competition.
In this case, there was no evidence that P & D’s use of "Poster Ads" was distinctive or well-known. As noted by the Court of Appeals, petitioner’s expert witnesses himself had testified that "Poster Ads was too generic a name. So it was difficult to identify it with any company, honestly speaking." This crucial admission by its own expert witness that "Poster Ads" could not be associated with P & D showed that, in the mind of the public, the goods and services carrying the trademark "Poster Ads" could not be distinguished from the goods and services of other entities.
This fact also prevented the application of the doctrine of secondary meaning. "Poster Ads" was generic and incapable of being used as a trademark because it was used in the field of poster advertising, the very business engaged in by petitioner. "Secondary meaning" means that a word or phrase originally incapable of exclusive appropriation with reference to an article in the market (because it is geographically or otherwise descriptive) might nevertheless have been used for so long and so exclusively by one producer with reference to his article that, in the trade and to that branch of the purchasing public, the word or phrase has come to mean that the article was his property. The admission by petitioner’s own expert witness that he himself could not associate "Poster Ads" with petitioner P & D because it was "too generic" definitely precluded the application of this exception.
FACTUAL ANTECEDENTS: Plaintiff-appellant Pearl and Dean (Phil.), Inc. is a corporation engaged in the manufacture of advertising display units simply referred to as light boxes. These units utilize specially printed posters sandwiched between plastic sheets and illuminated with back lights. Pearl and Dean was able to secure a Certificate of Copyright Registration dated January 20, 1981 over these illuminated display units. The advertising light boxes were marketed under the trademark "Poster Ads". The application for registration of the trademark was filed with the Bureau of Patents, Trademarks and Technology Transfer on June 20, 1983, but was approved only on September 12, 1988, per Registration No. 41165. From 1981 to about 1988, Pearl and Dean employed the services of Metro Industrial Services to manufacture its advertising displays.
Sometime in 1985, Pearl and Dean negotiated with defendant-appellant Shoemart, Inc. (SMI) for the lease and installation of the light boxes in SM City North Edsa. Since SM City North Edsa was under construction at that time, SMI offered as an alternative, SM Makati and SM Cubao, to which Pearl and Dean agreed. On September 11, 1985, Pearl and Dean’s General Manager, Rodolfo Vergara, submitted for signature the contracts covering SM Cubao and SM Makati to SMI’s Advertising Promotions and Publicity Division Manager, Ramonlito Abano. Only the contract for SM Makati, however, was returned signed. On October 4, 1985, Vergara wrote Abano inquiring about the other contract and reminding him that their agreement for installation of light boxes was not only for its SM Makati branch, but also for SM Cubao. SMI did not bother to reply.
Instead, in a letter dated January 14, 1986, SMI’s house counsel informed Pearl and Dean that it was rescinding the contract for SM Makati due to non-performance of the terms thereof. In his reply dated February 17, 1986, Vergara protested the unilateral action of SMI, saying it was without basis. In the same letter, he pushed for the signing of the contract for SM Cubao.
Two years later, Metro Industrial Services, the company formerly contracted by Pearl and Dean to make its display units, offered to construct light boxes for Shoemart’s chain of stores. SMI approved the proposal and ten (10) light boxes were subsequently fabricated by Metro Industrial for SMI. After its contract with Metro Industrial was terminated, SMI engaged the services of EYD Rainbow Advertising Corporation to make the light boxes. Some 300 units were fabricated in 1991. These were delivered on a staggered basis and installed at SM Megamall and SM City.
Sometime in 1989, Pearl and Dean, received reports that exact copies of its light boxes were installed at SM City and in the fastfood section of SM Cubao. Upon investigation, Pearl and Dean found out that aside from the two (2) reported SM branches, light boxes similar to those it manufactures were also installed in two (2) other SM stores. It further discovered that defendant-appellant North Edsa Marketing Inc. (NEMI), through its marketing arm, Prime Spots Marketing Services, was set up primarily to sell advertising space in lighted display units located in SMI’s different branches. Pearl and Dean noted that NEMI is a sister company of SMI.
In the light of its discoveries, Pearl and Dean sent a letter dated December 11, 1991 to both SMI and NEMI enjoining them to cease using the subject light boxes and to remove the same from SMI’s establishments. It also demanded the discontinued use of the trademark "Poster Ads," and the payment to Pearl and Dean of compensatory damages in the amount of Twenty Million Pesos (P20,000,000.00).
Upon receipt of the demand letter, SMI suspended the leasing of two hundred twenty-four (224) light boxes and NEMI took down its advertisements for "Poster Ads" from the lighted display units in SMI’s stores. Claiming that both SMI and NEMI failed to meet all its demands, Pearl and Dean filed this instant case for infringement of trademark and copyright, unfair competition and damages.
In denying the charges hurled against it, SMI maintained that it independently developed its poster panels using commonly known techniques and available technology, without notice of or reference to Pearl and Dean’s copyright. SMI noted that the registration of the mark "Poster Ads" was only for stationeries such as letterheads, envelopes, and the like. Besides, according to SMI, the word "Poster Ads" is a generic term which cannot be appropriated as a trademark, and, as such, registration of such mark is invalid. It also stressed that Pearl and Dean is not entitled to the reliefs prayed for in its complaint since its advertising display units contained no copyright notice, in violation of Section 27 of P.D. 49. SMI alleged that Pearl and Dean had no cause of action against it and that the suit was purely intended to malign SMI’s good name. On this basis, SMI, aside from praying for the dismissal of the case, also counterclaimed for moral, actual and exemplary damages and for the cancellation of Pearl and Dean’s Certification of Copyright Registration No. PD-R-2558 dated January 20, 1981 and Certificate of Trademark Registration No. 4165 dated September 12, 1988.
NEMI, for its part, denied having manufactured, installed or used any advertising display units, nor having engaged in the business of advertising. It repleaded SMI’s averments, admissions and denials and prayed for similar reliefs and counterclaims as SMI."
The RTC of Makati City decided in favor of P & D.
On appeal, however, the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court. Dissatisfied, petitioner P & D filed the instant petition assigning the following errors for the Court’s consideration:
ISSUES: In resolving this very interesting case, we are challenged once again to put into proper perspective four main concerns of intellectual property law — patents, copyrights, trademarks and unfair competition arising from infringement of any of the first three. We shall focus then on the following issues:
(1) if the engineering or technical drawings of an advertising display unit (light box) are granted copyright protection (copyright certificate of registration) by the National Library, is the light box depicted in such engineering drawings ipso facto also protected by such copyright?
(2) or should the light box be registered separately and protected by a patent issued by the Bureau of Patents Trademarks and Technology Transfer (now Intellectual Property Office) — in addition to the copyright of the engineering drawings?
(3) can the owner of a registered trademark legally prevent others from using such trademark if it is a mere abbreviation of a term descriptive of his goods, services or business?
HELD: WHEREFORE, the petition is hereby DENIED and the decision of the Court of Appeals dated May 22, 2001 is AFFIRMED in toto.
ON THE ISSUE OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT: Although petitioner’s copyright certificate was entitled "Advertising Display Units" (which depicted the box-type electrical devices), its claim of copyright infringement cannot be sustained.
Copyright, in the strict sense of the term, is purely a statutory right. Being a mere statutory grant, the rights are limited to what the statute confers. It may be obtained and enjoyed only with respect to the subjects and by the persons, and on terms and conditions specified in the statute. Accordingly, it can cover only the works falling within the statutory enumeration or description.
P & D secured its copyright under the classification class "O" work. This being so, petitioner’s copyright protection extended only to the technical drawings and not to the light box itself because the latter was not at all in the category of "prints, pictorial illustrations, advertising copies, labels, tags and box wraps." The light box was not a literary or artistic piece which could be copyrighted under the copyright law. And no less clearly, neither could the lack of statutory authority to make the light box copyrightable be remedied by the simplistic act of entitling the copyright certificate issued by the National Library as "Advertising Display Units."In fine, if SMI and NEMI reprinted P & D’s technical drawings for sale to the public without license from P & D, then no doubt they would have been guilty of copyright infringement. But this was not the case. SMI’s and NEMI’s acts complained of by P & D were to have units similar or identical to the light box illustrated in the technical drawings manufactured by Metro and EYD Rainbow Advertising, for leasing out to different advertisers. Was this an infringement of petitioner’s copyright over the technical drawings? We do not think so.
ON THE ISSUE OF PATENT INFRINGEMENT: This brings us to the next point: if, despite its manufacture and commercial use of the light boxes without license from petitioner, private respondents cannot be held legally liable for infringement of P & D’s copyright over its technical drawings of the said light boxes, should they be liable instead for infringement of patent? We do not think so either.
For some reason or another, petitioner never secured a patent for the light boxes. It therefore acquired no patent rights which could have protected its invention, if in fact it really was. And because it had no patent, petitioner could not legally prevent anyone from manufacturing or commercially using the contraption.
To be able to effectively and legally preclude others from copying and profiting from the invention, a patent is a primordial requirement. No patent, no protection. The ultimate goal of a patent system is to bring new designs and technologies into the public domain through disclosure. Ideas, once disclosed to the public without the protection of a valid patent, are subject to appropriation without significant restraint.
On one side of the coin is the public which will benefit from new ideas; on the other are the inventors who must be protected.
Therefore, not having gone through the arduous examination for patents, the petitioner cannot exclude others from the manufacture, sale or commercial use of the light boxes on the sole basis of its copyright certificate over the technical drawings.
Stated otherwise, what petitioner seeks is exclusivity without any opportunity for the patent office (IPO) to scrutinize the light box’s eligibility as a patentable invention. The irony here is that, had petitioner secured a patent instead, its exclusivity would have been for 17 years only. But through the simplified procedure of copyright-registration with the National Library — without undergoing the rigor of defending the patentability of its invention before the IPO and the public — the petitioner would be protected for 50 years. This situation could not have been the intention of the law.
ON THE ISSUE OF TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT: This issue concerns the use by respondents of the mark "Poster Ads" which petitioner’s president said was a contraction of "poster advertising." P & D was able to secure a trademark certificate for it, but one where the goods specified were "stationeries such as letterheads, envelopes, calling cards and newsletters."22 Petitioner admitted it did not commercially engage in or market these goods. On the contrary, it dealt in electrically operated backlit advertising units and the sale of advertising spaces thereon, which, however, were not at all specified in the trademark certificate.
Under the circumstances, the Court of Appeals correctly cited Faberge Inc. vs. Intermediate Appellate Court,23 where we, invoking Section 20 of the old Trademark Law, ruled that "the certificate of registration issued by the Director of Patents can confer (upon petitioner) the exclusive right to use its own symbol only to those goods specified in the certificate, subject to any conditions and limitations specified in the certificate x x x. One who has adopted and used a trademark on his goods does not prevent the adoption and use of the same trademark by others for products which are of a different description."24 Faberge, Inc. was correct and was in fact recently reiterated in Canon Kabushiki Kaisha vs. Court of Appeals.25
Assuming arguendo that "Poster Ads" could validly qualify as a trademark, the failure of P & D to secure a trademark registration for specific use on the light boxes meant that there could not have been any trademark infringement since registration was an essential element thereof.1âwphi1
ON THE ISSUE OF UNFAIR COMPETITION: If at all, the cause of action should have been for unfair competition, a situation which was possible even if P & D had no registration. However, while the petitioner’s complaint in the RTC also cited unfair competition, the trial court did not find private respondents liable therefor. Petitioner did not appeal this particular point; hence, it cannot now revive its claim of unfair competition.
But even disregarding procedural issues, we nevertheless cannot hold respondents guilty of unfair competition.
By the nature of things, there can be no unfair competition under the law on copyrights although it is applicable to disputes over the use of trademarks. Even a name or phrase incapable of appropriation as a trademark or tradename may, by long and exclusive use by a business (such that the name or phrase becomes associated with the business or product in the mind of the purchasing public), be entitled to protection against unfair competition.
In this case, there was no evidence that P & D’s use of "Poster Ads" was distinctive or well-known. As noted by the Court of Appeals, petitioner’s expert witnesses himself had testified that "Poster Ads was too generic a name. So it was difficult to identify it with any company, honestly speaking." This crucial admission by its own expert witness that "Poster Ads" could not be associated with P & D showed that, in the mind of the public, the goods and services carrying the trademark "Poster Ads" could not be distinguished from the goods and services of other entities.
This fact also prevented the application of the doctrine of secondary meaning. "Poster Ads" was generic and incapable of being used as a trademark because it was used in the field of poster advertising, the very business engaged in by petitioner. "Secondary meaning" means that a word or phrase originally incapable of exclusive appropriation with reference to an article in the market (because it is geographically or otherwise descriptive) might nevertheless have been used for so long and so exclusively by one producer with reference to his article that, in the trade and to that branch of the purchasing public, the word or phrase has come to mean that the article was his property. The admission by petitioner’s own expert witness that he himself could not associate "Poster Ads" with petitioner P & D because it was "too generic" definitely precluded the application of this exception.
