Scope of Non-Copyrightable Matter
Copyright protects original intellectual creations in the literary and artistic domain, but it does not protect everything that may be written, drawn, compiled, taught, reported, programmed, or published. The line is drawn between protectible expression and unprotectible subject matter. A person may own the original wording, arrangement, illustration, photograph, music, code, or other expressive form, but cannot own the underlying idea, fact, rule, method, system, official text, or government work when the law excludes it from copyright.
The exclusion is substantive. If the matter is non-copyrightable, copying it is not infringement, although copying the author's protected expression around it may still be actionable. The proper inquiry is therefore not whether the defendant took something useful, valuable, or laboriously gathered, but whether the taking appropriated protected expression rather than material that copyright leaves free for public use.
Non-copyrightability is different from a limitation or exception to copyright. In a limitation, a protected work exists but the law permits a particular use. In non-copyrightable subject matter, no copyright attaches to the excluded material in the first place. This distinction matters because there is no need to justify the use of an unprotectible idea, fact, official text, or government work as fair use when the use is confined to what the law does not protect.
Ideas, Procedures, Systems, Methods, Concepts, Principles, Discoveries, and Data
The IP Code denies copyright protection to any idea, procedure, system, method or operation, concept, principle, discovery, or mere data as such, even when it is expressed, explained, illustrated, or embodied in a work. This rule is the statutory form of the idea-expression distinction. Copyright may protect the author's particular expression of a thought, but not the thought itself.
An idea remains free even when it is novel, useful, elegant, or commercially valuable. A textbook may be protected as to its original prose, diagrams, and organization, but the legal theory, business method, scientific explanation, accounting technique, recipe process, game rule, exercise routine, teaching method, or investment system described in it may be practiced, retaught, criticized, or improved by others. Copyright does not convert instruction into monopoly over the instructed act.
A procedure or method is unprotectible because copyright is not a patent. The written manual for performing a process may be protected as text, but the process itself is not. The same distinction applies to software: source code and object code may be protected as literary expression, but the algorithm, functionality, command structure, operating method, and result produced by the program are not protected as copyrightable subject matter when taken as functional concepts.
A principle or discovery is likewise excluded because copyright rewards authorship, not ownership of truth. Scientific facts, historical conclusions, mathematical propositions, legal propositions, and discovered relationships in nature or society remain available to all. The researcher may protect the original article, chart, or explanatory language, but cannot prevent others from using the discovered fact or principle.
Mere data as such are not protected even when collected through expense, skill, or diligence. Names, addresses, measurements, dates, prices, statistics, stock information, weather readings, case citations, and similar data do not become copyrightable merely because they are useful or difficult to gather. Copyright requires original authorship, not mere industrious collection.
A compilation of data may still be protected if the author's selection, coordination, or arrangement is original. The protection is thin and extends only to the creative choices in the compilation, not to the data themselves. A later user may copy the underlying facts and arrange them independently, but may not appropriate a protectible original arrangement in a substantially similar form.
Practical Effect of the Idea-Expression Line
| Material Used | Copyright Result |
|---|---|
| Underlying idea, rule, method, concept, discovery, or data | No copyright attaches to the material as such. |
| Original words, illustrations, diagrams, examples, or arrangement used to explain the material | Copyright may attach to the expressive form if original. |
| Facts extracted from a protected article or database | The facts may be used, but the protected prose or original arrangement may not be copied unlawfully. |
| Functional instructions in a manual or computer program | The function or method is free; the original textual or code expression may be protected. |
Where an idea can be expressed only in a limited number of practical ways, protection over the expression is narrow. Copyright cannot be used to prevent others from using necessary, standard, or inevitable forms of expression that follow from the unprotectible idea or function. The more functional or factual the work is, the more carefully the protected expressive contribution must be isolated.
News of the Day and Miscellaneous Facts
News of the day and other miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information are not copyrightable. The event, occurrence, public statement, score, accident, market movement, government action, weather event, arrest, filing, or other reported fact belongs to the public domain of information. No person may claim copyright over the fact that an event happened.
The exclusion does not mean that journalism is unprotected. A news article, feature story, photograph, video, graphic, interview transcript, or editorial may contain original expression protected by copyright. The protection covers the author's narrative choices, wording, visual composition, sequencing, and other creative elements. It does not cover the bare news, factual content, or information disclosed by the report.
The same rule applies to summaries of public facts. A person may write a new account of the same event, prepare a chronology, use public quotations subject to applicable rules, compare reported figures, or incorporate disclosed facts into a later work. Infringement concerns arise when the later work copies protected expression, not when it merely reports the same facts.
Official Texts of Legislative, Administrative, and Legal Nature
Official texts of a legislative, administrative, or legal nature, as well as official translations, are non-copyrightable. Laws must be knowable, usable, quoted, reproduced, taught, invoked, criticized, and complied with by the public. Copyright cannot be asserted to restrict access to the authoritative text of the law or to official legal materials through which the State speaks.
This category includes official statutes, codes, rules, regulations, ordinances, court issuances, administrative issuances, and comparable official legal texts. The exclusion covers the official text itself and any official translation. The reason is institutional rather than creative: the public must remain free to copy, circulate, and rely on official legal language.
Private contributions surrounding official texts may be protected if they are original. A private publisher's annotations, syllabus, headnotes, editorial notes, indexes, summaries, cross-references, translations not officially adopted, or original selection and arrangement may be protected to the extent of the private authorship. The official legal text embedded in the publication remains free for public use.
The same distinction applies to forms and templates issued by government offices. The official form or prescribed administrative text is not protected as official material, but a private explanatory guide, commentary, or annotated version may receive protection for original authorship. Copyright over the private additions does not give control over the official text.
Works of the Government of the Philippines
No copyright subsists in any work of the Government of the Philippines. A government work is one created by an officer or employee of the Philippine Government, or of its subdivisions and instrumentalities, including government-owned or controlled corporations with original charters, as part of regularly prescribed official duties. The decisive points are the public character of the employer, the status of the creator, and the connection between the work and official duties.
Examples include reports, manuals, maps, drawings, photographs, forms, databases, educational materials, advisories, circulars, speeches, and similar works prepared by public officers or employees in the performance of official functions. The absence of copyright means the Government cannot sue for copyright infringement over the government work as such, although other laws may regulate confidentiality, national security, privacy, records access, official insignia, or misuse of government resources.
The rule does not automatically apply to every work merely because the Government paid for it, possessed it, or published it. If a private author, consultant, contractor, or supplier creates a work for the Government, copyright ownership depends on the applicable contract, commissioning arrangement, employment rules, and transfer provisions. The work is not a government work under the statutory definition merely because the Government is the client.
A public officer or employee may still own copyright in a work created outside regularly prescribed official duties, subject to civil service, ethics, conflict-of-interest, and contract rules. The public character of the author's office does not strip protection from a private novel, article, artwork, lecture material, or other work made in a personal capacity and not as part of official functions.
Use for Profit and Public Legal Materials
Although no copyright subsists in government works, prior approval of the concerned agency or office is required for exploitation of such works for profit, and the agency may impose conditions such as payment of royalties. This requirement is an administrative control over profitable exploitation; it does not create copyright in the government work itself.
No prior approval or condition is required for the use, for any purpose, of statutes, rules and regulations, and speeches, lectures, sermons, addresses, and dissertations pronounced, read, or rendered in courts of justice, before administrative agencies, in deliberative assemblies, or in meetings of public character. These materials are treated with special openness because they form part of public legal, governmental, or deliberative discourse.
The author of the public speeches, lectures, sermons, addresses, and dissertations retains the exclusive right to make a collection of those works. Thus, individual public use of the spoken or rendered material is free in the manner allowed by law, but the author's protected interest in compiling the works as a collection is separately recognized.
The Government may also receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, succession, donation, or other lawful mode. When the Government owns copyright by transfer, it acts as owner of a copyright that validly originated elsewhere. Likewise, publication or republication by the Government of a private copyrighted work does not annul or abridge the private copyright unless there is a lawful transfer, license, or expiration.
Mixed Works Containing Protected and Unprotected Elements
Many works contain both copyrightable and non-copyrightable elements. A legal reviewer contains rules of law that are not owned by the author, but the author's original organization, explanations, hypotheticals, tables, and phrasing may be protected. A map may contain public geographic facts, but its original symbols, design choices, and artistic treatment may be protected. A directory may contain unprotected names and numbers, but an original selection or arrangement may be protected.
In mixed works, the protected and unprotected portions must be separated. The copyright owner cannot expand protection by pointing to the value of the unprotected material. Conversely, a later user cannot escape liability by claiming that a work contains facts or ideas if the later work copied original expression beyond what was necessary to use those facts or ideas.
Protection is strongest when the author had many expressive choices and used them creatively. Protection is weakest when the work is dictated by function, accuracy, legal form, industry standards, available data, or official language. Thin protection still prevents close copying of original expression, but it does not prevent independent expression of the same facts, ideas, or functions.
Consequences of Non-Copyrightability
- No exclusive economic rights arise over the excluded matter. The claimant cannot control reproduction, distribution, adaptation, public performance, communication, or other copyright acts with respect to the unprotected matter itself.
- Substantial similarity must concern protected expression. Similarity in facts, ideas, methods, systems, official language, or government material is legally insufficient unless protected expressive elements were also copied.
- Licensing language cannot create copyright where the law denies it. A contract may bind parties who agreed to it, but private labels, notices, or access terms do not transform official texts, facts, ideas, or government works into copyrightable subject matter against the public.
- Other rights may still matter. Non-copyrightability does not answer questions involving patents, trademarks, trade secrets, data privacy, confidentiality, unfair competition, official secrets, records law, or contractual obligations.
- Derivative authorship must add original expression. A person who rearranges public data, annotates a statute, translates unofficially, or explains a government issuance gains protection only for original additions, not for the underlying public material.
The governing principle is public availability of basic building blocks. Copyright encourages authors to create expressive works, but it leaves ideas, facts, methods, official law, and government works available for teaching, compliance, innovation, criticism, reporting, and further authorship. The protected work may be owned; the public materials inside it remain free.