Intellectual Property

V&A Law is well-recognized for its patent and trademark prosecution practice, assisting clients in the preparation, prosecution, registration, and maintenance of their trademarks, patents, utility models, and designs before the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines. V&A Law represents both Philippine and foreign clients, ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises to large multinational corporations across a broad range of industries, including banking and financial services, pharmaceuticals, beauty and wellness, food and beverage, information technology, transportation and logistics, apparel and luxury goods, and hospitality.

V&A Law conducts trademark searches, online use searches, trademark publication monitoring services, and commercialization advice to help clients avoid registrability issues and potential infringement risks.

V&A Law has an exceptional patent team comprised of lawyers with diverse technical backgrounds in medicine, molecular biology, physics, chemistry, and materials science, enabling the firm to competently draft patent specifications and to effectively respond to substantive examination objections in-house.

V&A Law assists its clients with copyright deposit and registration before the National Library of the Philippines and the Philippine Intellectual Property Office and provides legal advice regarding copyright protection, risk of infringement for new content, and advice on novel issues involving AI-usage. V&A Law has handled the review and registration of various types of creative works such as books, computer software, paintings, jingles, advertising materials, movies and documentaries, provided advice for both copyright owners and copyright users, as well as represented clients in copyright disputes.

Among others, V&A Law handled the copyright registration of BDO Unibank, Inc.’s underwriting software, provided advice to a foreign gallery on its acquisition of paintings and photographs made by Filipino artists, and has successfully represented artists from the University of the Philippines Alumni Association, Inc. against a spurious copyright infringement claim.  

V&A Law assists its clients with handling intellectual property commercialization matters with a view towards actualizing and maximizing the benefits of intellectual property protection. V&A Law handles multiple aspects of commercialization, licensing and franchising, including, intellectual property rights screening and audit, and due diligence investigations; matching potential licensors and licensees; negotiating, drafting and reviewing all types of agreements relating to the commercialization of intellectual property, including, license and franchise agreements; providing advice on adjacent issues such as regulatory compliance, tax, royalty payments, confidentiality, operations, quality control, rights enforcement, renewal and other matters arising from the performance of IP commercialization agreements; providing advice on business feasibility evaluation, and development and implementation of commercialization plans; and transacting with the relevant government agencies.

V&A Law capably handles trademark inter partes cases — from the preparation and filing of pleadings, research and collation of supporting evidence, to appearance during the pre-trial conference and mandatory mediation proceedings, and appeal proceedings, balancing trademark law expertise with skillful litigation before the IPOPHL.

V&A Law represents both local and foreign brands in trademark opposition and cancellation cases to vindicate their right to use and register their legitimate trademarks against unfounded or exaggerated claims of market competitors.  V&A Law also represents brand owners in offensive actions against bad faith filers as well as junior confusingly similar or identical marks to ensure the protection of their goodwill and the recognition of their well-known status.

V&A Law’s patent team combines technical expertise with a rigorous litigation approach to successfully cancel evergreening and invalid patents, as well as defend clients against spurious or overreaching patent infringement claims. V&A Law strongly advocates for the enhanced availability of alternative and cheaper medicines in the country for the benefit of the Filipino people, and has a strong track record assisting generic drug manufacturers with cancelling evergreening patents covering important active pharmaceutical ingredients that would otherwise allow drug manufacturers to unfairly monopolize life-saving medicines in the market. 

V&A Law conducts Freedom to Operate (FTO) searches as a precaution prior to registration and commercialization to help clients assess the feasibility of introducing new products into the market. Leveraging the Firm’s multidisciplinary expertise in medicine, molecular biology, physics, chemistry, and materials science, V&A Law delivers comprehensive FTO reports that identify relevant prior art, analyze such references in relation to the client’s product, and provide practical recommendations for mitigating potential infringement risk. V&A Law has prepared FTO reports for several active pharmaceutical ingredients used in preparing essential and life-saving preparations, including anti-diabetic medicines and compounds addressing heart failure.

V&A Law assists its clients in a wide range of enforcement actions. V&A Law maintains an in-house investigative team that delivers efficient, cost-effective, and responsive solutions to enforce IP rights across the Philippines. These services include market surveys, cease-and-desist letters, surveillance and investigation in coordination with law enforcement agencies, test-buys, application and implementation of search warrants, online enforcement, and the filing and prosecution of cases for IP rights violations before the IPOPHL and the regular courts.

V&A Law’s Intellectual Property Department capably handles IP enforcement and litigation matters, ensuring that the nuances of intellectual property cases are specifically addressed. This has resulted in wins which have translated into important legal precedents for IP cases in the Philippines. V&A Law successfully argued at the Supreme Court level for the indictment of the officers and stockholders of corporations conducting illegal liquefied petroleum gas refilling activities against Petron Corporation – a reversal of previous decisions allowing individual officers to escape liability through the use of the corporate veil.

As part of its enforcement services, V&A Law handles intellectual property rights recordal with the Bureau of Customs and assists clients with border control-related activities such as seizure and forfeiture proceedings. Through customs recordal, V&A Law ensures active monitoring of infringing and counterfeit goods entering into the country and swift action upon discovery of such violative imports, including filing requests for suspension of release orders, alert orders, and hold orders with the Bureau of Customs.

In the Philippines, the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) regulates the sale of processed food, drugs, medical devices, diagnostic reagents, cosmetics and household hazardous substances. Entities seeking to export, import, market, and distribute products falling under any of the said categories in the Philippine market are required to secure the necessary license or certificate from the FDA. V&A Law helps clients navigate the complexities of FDA regulatory requirements, providing advice and direct assistance with obtaining the necessary authorizations and approvals from the FDA.

V&A Law assists media, entertainment, and broadcasting entities in operating their businesses in the Philippines in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including issuances by the National Telecommunications Commission and the Department of Information and Communications Technology. Apart from the intellectual property protection of the brands and original content of these entities, V&A Law also provides advice and administrative assistance on foreign ownership issues, licensing and registration, and regulatory compliance.

With the evolution of broadcasting technology, V&A Law has also advised media companies on the requirements and regulations for over-the-top services, and online curated content services, and online advertising in the Philippines.

As an extension of its trademark practice, V&A Law offers comprehensive domain name protection services particularly registration, audit, and dispute. V&A Law assists clients with registering and maintaining domain names, monitoring third-party domain name registrations, and contesting bad faith registrations of domain names, which are critical to the protection of trademarks against online infringement and cybersquatting in the digital age.

V&A Law currently manages the Trademark Clearing House (TMCH) registrations and domain-related marks across multiple top-level domains (TLDs) for BDO Unibank, Inc., and has won a domain name dispute for the same under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). V&A Law is also advising a foreign company with regards to its domain name registrations in the Philippines.