Letter to His Holiness Pope Francis

November 11, 2014

His Holiness, Pope Francis PP.
00120 Via del Pellegrino
Citta del Vaticano


Our Dearest Holy Father,

Warmest and Most Felicitous Greetings!

In advance, may we extend our most hearty and warm Welcome to the Philippines and to Tacloban City!

We do not represent all the victims of the great typhoon Haiyan that in our country is called Yolanda. But like all the victims from the provinces of Leyte, Samar, Negros, Cebu, and Mindanao, we suffered and still are suffering.

First, we thank you for choosing to come to our country and to Tacloban our beloved hometown.

Since you are arriving please allow us to ventilate a small concern that we have written to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as well as to the Philippines Intellectual Property Office (Phils IPO).

We also wrote mail to Mr. Henry Sy owner of SM Shoemart super malls, GRANDE BELL gambling house, SMDC condominium towers.  The issue concerns the use of our ownership of intellectual property - the name of BONUS that was registered to us in the early 1980s - more than thirty years ago by the Philippine Government and under the protection of the various international conventions for protection of intellectual property worldwide. They are callous. For more than one year after we communicated with them in 2013, they have not given us a decent reply.

Sy family

The persons that infringed our intellectual property rights are owners of the SM Shoemart, GRANDE BELL gambling complex, SMDC condominium towers, and many other business.

These same owners sell products labeled BONUS. They will now open a new store in Tacloban City called Savemore Supermart.

We cannot stop them from opening this store. We cannot stop them from continuing to illegally use the rights we own to the name wherever they want to put up their stores Dearest Holy Father.

However, we pray that with your intervention, these people can make amends for more than one to two decades of infringement of our intellectural property rights.  We strongly and intensely invoke your kindness and charity to intercede for us with these people and let them make amends with us the real owners of the name they have been benefiting from for so very very long. We believe that if the SM Shoemart will proceed to make honest amends of their unauthorized use of the BONUS name, it will benefit a lot of people, mostly our own people that became victims of Haiyan-Yolanda.  It will not affect the standing of the owners of SM Shoemart that are advertised in world media as part of the few families that own the entire Asia.

 

Thank you Holy Father and with all our love and affection we pray that His Holiness will intercede for us and have a very safe, happy and successful trip to the Philippines!!!

Owners of Bonus Name Rights