Bad Template for Dynamic Business

Open Letter to Mr. Henry Sy and heirs

Dear Mr. Henry Sy,

The operation of the business conglomerate of SM Shoemart, Banco de Oro, the SM port management and ferry transport company, SM Development Corporation and real estate marketing companies, including the new Grande Belle brand in the gambling and entertainment industry are a showcase for a dynamically growing and evolving business template.

In the whole of Southeast and other parts of Asia where the SM business brand has operated, the group of companies has met only with success. Such success has carved a niche for Mr. Henry Sy in the upper echelon of the small community of billionaires.

In 1983, the Wei Wan Yan food packaging concept was formed and the Credence paper  and other school and office products line brand was born. In the immediate period, the marketing campaign concept for a multi-products line Bonus was accorded copyright ownership by the Philippine Government.

The owner of the brands shall now fully use the Wei wan yan, Credence and Bonus trade names as its own right. It is known  a well known fact that the SM Shoemart group of companies, particularly its merchandising arm, SM Supermart and SM Hypermarket, along with Save More and other allied marketing-retailing companies are using the Bonus trademark.

What propelled the company of Mr. Henry Sy to use the name Bonus that is rightfully owned by others is not known. However, there is a limit to the use of proprietary items like brand names as defined in both the laws of countries and in the Geneva Convention for the protection of intellectual property. In this, it is fitting that the company of Mr. Henry Sy should therefore stop  using the brand Bonus or make amends in the unlawful use of the brand whose copyright belongs to some other party.

The owners of the Bonus brand are prepared to accept a decent and reasonable offer of peaceful and amicable amends from the side of the illegal, unlawful infringers of its intellectual property.

This site can be reached through the email syneticindustries@gmail.com.

By:


The Owners
Bonus brand copyright

hmes2013: Start a campaign in your own community to help push forward the modernization, upgrade of PHIVOLCS

In sympathy with the people of Bohol, Cebu, Leyte, Samar, among many others that were affected by the recent Killer Earthquake, we are posting this call by the Disaster, Hazards Mapping Program Group (Hazmapping)

Article Source: http://www.hazmapping.com

From over 40 casualties, the death toll has risen to nearly 100 in the Carmen, Bohol Province-Cebu City earthquake. At that figure, the Carmen-Cebu tremor can qualify as a Killer Quake. Cebu and nearby areas has to be declared to be in a state of calamity. There are limited manuevers that aircraft can make at the Cebu airport due to the cracking and opening up of the airport's runways.

The six million dollar question is: how many more incidents like those in Carmen, Bohol and Cebu City and the other ones in Leyte, Samar will we be expecting?

Were the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) prepared adequately enough with equipment to monitor ground movement, tectonic plate disturbance, the nearly 100 deaths could have been avoided. 27 Billion Philippine Pesos is earmarked for pork barrel in the 2014 General Appropriations Act out of a total expenditure program of 2.26 Trillion Philippine Pesos. Would it be difficult to allocate even half of that pork barrel budget for emergency preparedness, disaster risk reduction, equipment upgrade?

Past Warnings of Big Disaster

This site has been warning the public for more than four years since the time of the former President, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Due to the total torpedoing of the private sector (Corinthian Gardens, Forbes Park, Dasmarinas Village, the owners of high rise condominiums at the left side of EDSA southbound, among others), of the program for predicting highly lethal effects of a major tremor in Metro Manila and the replication of this effort in many urban areas in the country by the same sector in collusion with some corrupt officials in the government, a large disaster and environmental hazards summit was proposed to be supported by the Philippine Government and the United Nations, among other institutions from many other sectors - including the non-profit (minus the Napoles et al NGOs).

Wanting responses

It is reiterated that in the time of Mrs. Arroyo, only the then Administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA), Ms. Elaine Bautista, now Mrs. Horn, had the small effort to make an email message to the proponents of the 2010 Disaster and Environmental Hazards Mapping Summit. And that was only because the United Nations Environment Programm (UNEP)  told the former Ms. Bautista to get in touch with HMES 2010 organizing group. At the time, concurrent to her post in MARINA, Ms. Bautista was considered a friend of UNEP and a significant point person for the Philippine Government in relation to selected UNEP concerns - particularly about emergency and assistance.

When Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino 3rd became President, the organizing group wrote to Ms. Corazon Juliano Soliman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Gen. Voltaire Tuvera Gazmin. Ms. Soliman did not respond. It was noticed however that several days later, Gen. Gazmin, the Secretary of the Department of National Defense gave an interview to national media.

In that interview, when Gazmin was asked about what the people should do when a disaster strikes, he replied: "Run for your lives."

Carrying the barest minimum luggage in their bodies, the poor, helpless people in above photos must have taken advice similar to that of Gen. Voltaire Gazmin's to leave and forget belongings elsewhere and to "run for your lives."

It will appear that the kind of response the government has given is exceedingly wanting in substance. It is hoped however that as a grandfather and parent, Gazmin to no fault of his own was merely showing his personal concern for the safety of the life of the average citizen. He was probably very well-meaning and was admonishing the people not to bring their television sets, beds, furniture, cash safety vaults, washing machines, cabinets, sofa, stoves with their fuel gas tanks, desk-stand-ceiling fans, air conditioners, desktop computers and refrigerators outside of their homes and instead to proceed to a more safe location and be saved in time of major catastrophe.

The head of the Philvolcs, Dr. Renato Solidum absolutely cannot be faulted and is blameless. For decades, had been ready to accept the support for equipment upgrade and modernization. Despite the billions of funds allocated to the departments of the government, the great oversight of perpetually forgetting to take care of the Philvolcs modernization programme has consistently been committed by this government.

Despite the billions lost for the personal enrichment of selected persons in our public sector and their intimate partners in very enterprising undertakings in the private sector, no one has shown keen interest in allowing the Philvolcs to finally get hold of the adequate funding for acquisition of hardware and software that will highly increase its forecasting accuracy and its earthquake trending studies and research on the major faults all over the country. Click here for more.

Philippine IPR Laws and Regulations: Challenges

The Philippine Copyright Law is published and readable in open sources such as Wikipedia. Other sites publish the entire Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines such as the Chan Robles law office.

It will be clear upon digesting the provisions of law for protection of intellectual property ownership that a large number of safeguards, safety nets are available for owners of intellectual property.

During conferences, conventions, seminars and small group meetings organized by the Philippine Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHIL), the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) of the United Nations and many other organizations concerned with protecting the rights of owners to their proprietary intellectual products, brands, literature, music, among others, the common lament among the very officials and their staff involved with IPO in the majority of countries around the world, the worst kind of problem encountered is the lack of support by the judiciary and the prosecution system.

The law enforcement sector is considered to be part of the integrated prosecution system of any country, according to past and present paradigms.

In sum, there are hardly cases that are successfully prosecuted, litigated in Court. One of the IPO community's concerns in recent past was imparting the knowledge about IPR to Judges of Philippine Courts and even going to the extent of forming Special IPR Courts for the Philippines.

Whether the efforts of the Philippine Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHIL) are succeeding, we can only surmise. The extent of piracy in the Philippines, the brand copying and the rampant engagement of local contractors of foreign brand owners in IPR infringement themselves, is so great that it is safe to say the revenues that had been lost to notorious violations of IPR laws and the Geneva Convention agreements from the 1980s alone to the present run to multi-trillions of Philippine Pesos.

If this staggering amount will not affect neither jolt the judiciary, the prosecution system and the whole gamut of government into action, then nothing can.

Meanwhile, the victims of infringement of rights of ownership of intellectual property, whether affluent or poor can just die waiting for the solutions to come or fight it out with the IP thieves until they are meted the applicable sanctions under law, if ever that will happen. Unlike the PDAF-DAP Scandal, in terms of relevance, the organizers of gimmick rallies and protests and media hype will not give due course to promoting or fostering collective action against the poisoning of our children because of chemical laced toys, burning of entire neighborhoods due to substandard christmas lights or electric wires, cables and factory defective mobile phone chargers and exploding cellular phones themselves, to name only a few of the dangers of uncontrolled piracy.

As a PR practitioner once said with contempt, "it just ain't saleable to the public, that's why." What public?

Credence Products

Credence is a brand of office and school supplies started in 1983. The target pilot market were very young consumers from the age bracket of 10-19 years old. Most were from grade school to high school. Credence was a way of imparting the importance of the value of credibility, integrity, honesty, transparency and accountability, among other positive traits to these young people.

The brand fared well and its most popular selling item was stationeries that kids write love notes and their school notes on.

At the right side of the stationery, an oriental ideograph was printed. One of the earliest choices was the symbol for Unity in Chinese calligraphy. The kids simply loved it and kept asking for more.

合流

Announcement from this site

Announcement to Readers:

This site will publish an open letter to the owner of a multi-billion owner of a retail-banking-real estate-gambling conglomerate with regard to illegal business practices without due regard to the parties that are robbed of the opportunity to profit from their proprietary interests.

The open letter will be published in a few days. An email copy form of the open letter will be sent to the various public sector agencies as well as to public institutions based outside the Philippines, that are concerned with the legal remedies and sanctions pertaining to the illegal acts committed by the said retail-banking-real estate-gambling conglomerate headquartered in the Philippines, with a number of satellite branches overseas.