The Court of Appeals (CA) has scrapped the case filed by ABS-CBN against the GMA Network, for what it claimed as a violation of RA 8293 (Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines).In a 14-page ruling issued last Monday, the fourth division of the appellate court has set aside the resolution of the Department of Justice issued last June 29 by then Secretary Alberto Agra, which approved the filing of violation of RA 8293 (Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines) against GMA.
The appeals court agreed that Secretary Raul Gonzalez was correct in clearing GMA executives for supposed violation of Sections 177 and 211 of the RA 8293 in an earlier DOJ resolution dated Aug.1, 2005.
It ruled that GMA’s airing of at least “five seconds” of ABS-CBN’s footage of the arrival of hostage victim Angelo dela Cruz from Iraq in 2004 was attended by “good faith” since there was no intention to “cause injury” to its rival network.
According to the the CA ruling, “Petitioners cannot be plausibly faulted for airing the live video feed that it had received from Reuters and CNN. Without malice and intent to cause injury to the private respondent, the act of petitioners in airing the disputed footage was simply founded on their belief that as a subscriber of said television services, they are allowed and contractually entitled to use the footage.”
The CA also noted that GMA immediately stopped using the video footage upon realizing that ABS-CBN was actually covering said news event.
The CA stressed that apart from lack of intent of GMA to grab the video from ABS-CBN, the act also cannot be considered violation of Sections 212.4 and 185.1 of RA 8293 since it was just a “short excerpt” compared to the entirety of the subject new footage.
Recall that both ABS-CBN and GMA made their respective broadcasts and coverage of the arrival of dela Cruz on July 22, 2004.
ABS-CBN aired live audio-video coverage of the arrival of dela Cruz at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) and the subsequent press conference.
The video was carried by Reuters Television Service on the condition that any of the footage would be considered by the latter under embargo against use by others.
GMA, being a subscriber of both Reuters and CNN, was able to receive the live video feed of the coverage of said arrival that was beamed by Reuters from the NAIA.
GMA later claimed that it did notice that what Reuters was airing were footage of ABS-CBN only after already airing the Reuters feed in its flash news report. The network consequently stopped airing the video footage.
Reuters admitted that it wasn’t able to inform the petitioners of the embargo in favor of ABS-CBN.
Reposted Courtesy: KAPAMILYALOGY
