Facts: Ruling; YES.
96. Philippine - Philippine Education Co. contracted with Austin Craig
Education Co. v, for the preparation and publication of an original article
Vicente Sotto and to be written by him concerning Mrs. Jose Rizal to be
Alindada published exclusively in the Philippine Education
Magazine. Pursuant to such Craig wrote an original
article entitled “The True Story of Mrs. Rizal” and
delivered it to plaintiff which paid him for it and
thereby became the exclusive owner of the article.
- Plaintiff then printed and published the article in its
December issue and was on sale to the public as it has
exclusive right to print and publish the article and it
gave notice in that issue “that all rights thereto were
reserved.”
- Philippine Education claimed that defendants Vicente
Sotto unlawfully and w/o knowledge or consent of
Plaintiff to the fact that the article published without
permission and requested that they publish in their
next issue that the said article was taken from plaintiff.
- Defendants claim that no theft was committed since
the right over such article was not registered under the
copyright law and that any newspaper can reprint the
article of professor craig without permission from
anybody.
- Defendants then filed a demurrer upon the ground that
it did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of
action which was overruled. They then made a general
and specific denial of all the material allegations of the
complaint.
- RTC ruled against defendants.
- defendant that in the publication of the article “we reserved
ISSUE: WON the article is protected by copyright law?
Section 2 of the Copy Right Law – enumerates the things that may be
copyrighted such as books, composite and cyclopedice works,
manuscripts, commentaries and critical studies.
Section 4 – writings published without names of the authors or under
pseudonyms are considered property of publishers
Section 5 – news items, editorial paragraphs, and aarticles in
periodicals may also be reproduced unless they contain a notice that
their publication is reserved or a notice of copyright but the source of
the reproduction or original reproduced shall be cited.
- The court said that neither professor Craig nor plaintiff applied
for or obtained a copyright of the article in question under the
terms and provisions of this act.
- Defendants claim that after it was published once in the
magazine, it became public property and that he had a legal
right to publish it in his magazine without giving the source of
reproduction.
- Analyzing the language used in the law, it says, first, that such
news items, editiorial paragprahs, and articles in periodicals
may be reproduced unless they contain a notice that their
publication is reserved or second that may also be reproduced
unless they contain a notice of copyright. But in either event,
the law provides that the source of the reproduction shall be
cited and is not confined to a case where there is a “notice of
copyright.”
- In this case, plaintiff did not give notice of its copyright for the
simple reason that it did not have a copyright but it did notify
all rights,” which was equivalent to notice that their
publication is “reserved.”
- The court said that Defendants had the right to publish the
article but it must give the source of the reproduction. Plaintiff
bought and paid for the article in question and published it
with notice that it reserved its right to such thus when
Defendants published such w/o disclosing the soruce of
reproduction, it violated plaintiffs right.
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Def