mmalabanan
The Supreme Court has partially granted ABS-CBN’s petition to sue for copyright infringement against two GMA executives over the use of the exclusive footage of the arrival in the Philippines of Angelo dela Cruz, an overseas Filipino worker kidnapped by Iraqi militants, in 2004.
The two executives facing the copyright infringement case are news operations head Grace dela Peña-Reyes and program manager John Oliver Manalastas.
During the SC’s press briefing on Thursday, the high court found that “the trial court erred in failing to resume the proceedings and that the Court of Appeals erred in finding that the then Secretary of Justice committed errors of jurisdiction despite its own pronouncement that petitioner ABS-CBN is the owner of the copyright on the news footage.”
In July 22, 2004, ABS-CBN captured exclusive footage of the arrival of dela Cruz in the country. The network allowed Reuters Television Service to use the footage under a special embargo agreement.
GMA then aired the live video feed of the coverage from Reuters on its program. According to ABS-CBN, the rival network “stole” and “pirated” the live feeds.
Meanwhile, GMA claimed that the network wasn’t aware that Reuters was airing the footage ABS-CBN had taken earlier.
The SC stated: ”Upon review by the Court, it found that the footage in question was copyrightable material and that respondent was aware of that fact. It however distiguished as to who was possibly liable on the basis of actual participation in the act of infringement. On this basis, the Court excluded the other respondents and included only respondents Dela Pena-Reyes and Manalastas arising from their positions, experience, knowledge, and participation.”
Felipe Gozon, Jessica Soho, Marissa Flores, and Gilberto Duavit are no longer included in the case.
