Elidad Kho v Court of Appeals and Summerville General Merchandising G.R. No. 115758. March 19, 2002

Facts:

Petitioner is doing business under the name of KEC Cosmetics Laboratory and is the registered owner of copyright Chin Chun Su and Oval Facial Cream Container with a patent right on Chin Chun Su & Device and Chin Chun Su for medicated cream after purchasing the same from Quintin Cheng, a registered owner in Supplemental Register of the Philippine Patent Office. It alleges that respondent Summerville advertised and sold the petitioner’s cream products under the brand name Chin Chun Su using similar container that the petitioner used thereby misleading the public and depriving the petitioner of business sales and income. It enjoins the respondent from allegedly infringing its copyright and patent right over the same product. In defense respondent claims to be the exclusive and authorized importer, re-packer and distributor of the Chin Chun Su product manufactured by Shun Yi Factory in Taiwan authorizing Summerville to register its trade name Chin Chun Su Medicated Cream with the Philippine Patent Office. It also points out that the assignee of the patent registration certification in the Philippines, Quintin Cheng, has already been terminated by the said Taiwanese Manufacturing Company. Trial court granted the injunction in favor of the petitioner. On appeal, respondent prays for the nullification of the writ of preliminary injunction which was set aside by the Court of Appeals on the account that the registration of the trademark Chin Chun Su by KEC with the supplemental register of the Bureau of Patents, Trademarks and Technology Transfer cannot be equated with registration in the principal register duly protected by the Trademark law.

Issue:

Whether or not petitioner’s copyright and patent over the name Chin Chun Su and its container entitle her to the use and ownership over the same to the exclusion of others?

Ruling:

The Supreme Court points out that trademark, copyright and patents are different intellectual property rights. A trademark is any visible sign capable of distinguishing the goods (trademark) or services (service mark) of an enterprise and shall include a stamped or marked container of goods. The scope of a copyright is confined to literary and artistic works which are original intellectual creations in the literary and artistic domain protected from the moment of their creation. Patentable inventions, on the other hand, refer to any technical solution of a problem in any field of human activity which is new, involves an inventive step and is industrially applicable. To be entitled for the exclusive use of the name and container of the cream product, which are proper subjects of a trademark, the user has to sufficiently prove that she registered or used it before anybody did. The petitioner’s patent and copyright registration does not guarantee the right to exclusive use of the product because they are not the proper subject of the said intellectual right (trademark). Hence the preliminary injunction cannot be issued since the petitioner has not registered the trademark of the product Chin Chin Su in their name.