A brazen takeover bid

The violent takeover of the operations of Stradcom Corporation, the information technology provider of the Land Transportation Office (LTO), is nothing but a brazen act of lawlessness happening right inside a government complex, the LTO compound in Quezon City.

This is something that President Noynoy Aquino should not allow to go unpunished.

The President should ask Transportation Secretary Jose “Ping” de Jesus to immediately place under preventive suspension LTO chief Virginia Torres and her chief executive assistant Menelia Mortel for their actions that tend to show that they did nothing to prevent the incident last Dec. 9 or, worse, that they were a party to it.

Stradcom directly identified Torres, Mortel and some members of the Quezon City police as willing participants in a “grand conspiracy” to hand the company on a silver platter to the group of Aderito Yujuico and Bonifacio Sumbilla without the benefit of a court order.

Yujuico and Sumbilla were former partners of Cesar Quiambao, Stradcom president and owner.

The CCTV footage of the raid showed that after some elements of the QC police forcibly evicted without court order the legitimate security guards of Stradcom, three jeeploads of security guards belonging to the Unilateral Security Agency then took control of its facility.

The video also revealed that the raiding security guards were apparently hired by Yujuico and Sumbilla when they allowed the same, their lawyer Jer Samson, as well as Torres and Mortel to go inside the Stradcom building.

The rogue security guards were only evicted from Stradcom when de Jesus ordered the police to bundle them out after Yujuico and Sumbilla failed to produce any court order to effect a takeover of Stradcom.

Torres has a lot of explaining to do, like why was it that she allowed a group of armed men not only to enter the LTO compound in the wee hours of the morning, but also to cause mayhem at Stradcom?

Why were Torres and Mortel seen in the video waiting in the lobby of Stradcom for   Sumbilla and Yujuico before they as a group went inside the Stradcom building? Why did she even entertain them when as early as Dec. 2, the two men already failed to present to her a court order to support their claim that they are the new owners of Stradcom?

Why was it that she did not ask the group of Yujuico and Sumbilla to leave after they failed to produce a court order and why did she have to wait for De Jesus to do that?

Observers are saying that the explanation of Torres that she was not favoring Yujuico’s group in a dispute which should be resolved in court and not by any official belonging to the executive department, is kind of hard to swallow. They add that it was quite a stretch considering her actions.

Questions are raised also as to why some QCPD members participated in the forcible takeover of Stradcom, knowing they had no warrant and would be a party to a crime? In the same vein, would Yujuico and Sumbilla have had the guts to take over the Stradcom with their private armed men if they did not have the backing of someone powerful?

The claim of Yujuico and Sumbilla regarding their alleged stake in Stradcom is not the issue here. Such is a matter they should bring to court for decision. The issue here is a blatant, uncivilized and illegal takeover of a private enterprise, for which somebody should be held accountable.

Letter from the readers

“When I attended a Christmas party recently, I heard some balikbayans from the US talking excitedly TV5’s primetime show Willing Willie. They were avid followers of Wowowee” in The Filipino Channel until ABS-CBN axed the show and Willie Revillame bolted the Kapamilya network despite his contract that is supposed to end in 2011.

“I am amazed how Willie still manages to draw some following among our countrymen abroad despite his haughtiness, arrogance, and dishonesty. Nevertheless, there must be something about what this guy does that makes him endeared to certain sectors of our society, especially the older women.

“What struck me about the conversations among the balikbayans at the party was the fact that they were talking about Willing Willie and how it closely resembles Wowowee.

“I was amused because these balikbayans seem to have memorized everything about Wowowee like the opening number, the set design, the audience’s seats, camera movements, and program flow. They even remember famous Wowowee game segments like Willie of Fortune and Biga-Ten, which they say are now in Willing Willie but called differently.

“This reminded me about the recent copyright infringement case that ABS-CBN filed vs Willie and TV5.

“I asked one of my lawyer friends what would constitute copyright infringement. He told me that copyright infringement is any violation of the rights of the creator of an intellectual property. In this case, ABS-CBN is the creator and owner of the copyright over the television program Wowowee. Thus, no one can imitate Wowowee without securing the permission of ABS-CBN. In the case of Willing Willie, copyright infringement was committed through the wholesale imitation and adoption of the look and feel of Wowowee.

But I told my lawyer friend that TV networks across the globe seem to be all guilty of copying each other’s offerings. We’ve all seen many game shows from different countries bearing similarities with one another. Isn’t that copyright infringement as well?

“I was told that TV formats are not entitled to copyright. No party can claim to have the exclusive rights to a kind of program, or even elements of a program, such as a game show or a variety show. But no party may copy and imitate a program by adopting the exact expression and execution of elements of a program such that both programs will look like exact copies of each other.

“So in the case of ABS-CBN, I believe the network wasn’t complaining about an imitation of a game show format, but for the imitation of its program Wowowee.

“In layman’s term, ABS-CBN is saying that Willie has stolen Wowowee and moved it to another network

“Willie and his production staff, who I heard mostly came from Wowowee must have thought that sticking to their winning formula was the only way to lure their followers again. “ – Name withheld upon request

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