Laktaw vs Paginawan
GR. No. L-11937
April 1 1918
En Banc
One-liner
“This does not show that there was no reproduction or copying by the defendant of the plaintiffs work,
but just the opposite, for he who intends to imitate the work of another, tries to make it appear in some
manner that there is some difference between the original and the imitation; and in the example referred
to, with respect to the preposition a (to), that dissimilarity as to the province designated seems to effect
the same purpose.”
Facts:
This case is about Pedro Lakataw who is the owner and author of a literary work entitiled
Diccionario Hispano-Tagalog and accused defendant reproducing the said literary work, improperyly
copied the greater part thereof in the work published by him and entitled Diccionariong Kastila-Tagalog,
Plaintiff contended that the damages occasioned to the plaintiff by the publication of defendants work
amounted to 10,000. The plaintiff went to the court to order the defendant to withdraw from sale all stock
of the work and to pay the plaintiff the sum of 10,000 with costs..
The defendant in his answer denied generally each and every allegation of the complaint and prayed the
court to absolve him from the complaint. The court ruled in favor of defendant Paglinawan on the ground
that a comparison of the plaintiffs dictionary with that of the defendant does not show that the latter is an
improper copy of the former., to which plaintiff moved for a new trial on the ground that the judgment
was against the law and the weight of evidence. Plaintiff-Petitioner appealed to the Supreme Court upon a
bill of exception.
Issue: WON Defendant Paglinawan had reproduced the plaintiffs work and that defendant violated article
7 of the Law on Intellectual Property
Ruling:
Therefore, in order that said article may be violated, it is not necessary, as the court below seems to have
understood, that a work should be an improper copy of another work previously published. It is enough
that another's work has been reproduced without the consent of the owner, even though it be only to
annotate, add something to it, or improve any edition thereof
That, of the Spanish words in the defendant's dictionary, Exhibit B, which correspond to each letter of the
alphabet, those that are enumerated below have been copied and reproduced from the plaintiff's
dictionary, with the exception of those that are stated to be defendant's own.Therefore, of the 23,560
Spanish words in the defendant's dictionary, after deducting 17 words corresponding to the letters K and
X (for the plaintiff has no words corresponding to them), only 3,108 words are the defendant's own, or,
what is the same thing, the defendant has added only this number of words to those that are in the
plaintiff's dictionary, he having reproduced or copied the remaining 20,452 words
That the defendant also literally reproduced and copied for the Spanish words in his dictionary, the
equivalents, definitions and different meanings in Tagalog, given in plaintiff's dictionary, having
reproduced, as to some words, everything that appears in the plaintiff's dictionary for similar Spanish
words, although as to some he made some additions of his own. Said copies and reproductions are
numerous as may be seen, by comparing both dictionaries and using as a guide or index the defendant's
memorandum and notes, first series, Exhibit C, in which, as to each word, the similarities and differences
between them are set forth in detail.
That the printer's errors in the plaintiff's dictionary as to the expression of some words in Spanish as well
as their equivalents in Tagalog are also reproduced, a fact which shows that the defendant, in preparing
his dictionary, literally copied those Spanish words and their meanings and equivalents in Tagalog from
the plaintiff's dictionary
The trial court has chosen at random, as is stated in the judgment appealed from, some words from said
dictionaries in making the comparison on which its conclusion is based, and consequently the conclusion
reached by it must be inaccurate and not well founded, because said comparison was not complete.
In the judgment appealed from, the court gives one to understand that the reproduction of another's
dictionary without the owner's consent does not constitute a violation of the Law of Intellectual Property
for the court's idea of a dictionary is stated in the decision itself, as follows:
“Dictionaries have to be made with the aid of others, and they are improved by the increase of
words. What may be said of a pasture ground may be said also of a dictionary, i. e., that it should
be common property for all who may desire to write a new dictionary, and the defendant has
come to this pasture ground and taken whatever he needed from it in the exercise of a perfect
right.”
Such idea is very erroneous, especially in relation to the Law of Intellectual Property. Danvilla y Collado
the author of the Law of January 10, 1879, on Intellectual Property, which was discussed and approved in
the Spanish Cortes, in his work entitled La Propiedad Intelectual (page 362, 1st ed.) states with respect to
dictionaries and in relation to article 7 of said law:
“The protection of the law cannot be denied to the author of a dictionary, for although words are
not the property of anybody, their definitions, the example that explain their sense, and the
manner of expressing their different meanings, may constitute a special work. On this point, the
correctional court of the Seine held, on August 16, 1864, that a dictionary constitutes property,
although some of the words therein are explained by mere definitions expressed in a few lines
and sanctioned by usage, provided that the greater part of the other words contain new meanings;
new meanings which evidently may only belonged to the first person who published them.”
