Eighteenth Congress
Second Regular Session

HOUSE BILL NO. 7821

Introduced by
REPRESENTATIVE LOREN B. LEGARDA

AN ACT
SAFEGUARDING THE TRADITIONAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS
PEOPLES

Explanatory Note

The Philippines has 14-17 million indigenous peoples who belong to 110
ethno-linguistic groups! With their unique traditions, cultures and practices, they
have been set apart from the conventional world and away from the mainstream
society. Part of the many struggles of the IPs is protecting their traditional cultural
heritage - their artistic expressions (writings, songs, performances, etc), traditional
arts and crafts, to name a few.

Traditional cultural heritage, whether tangible or intangible, is a vital right of
indigenous communities, which must be respected and protected. However, the
present law protecting indigenous peoples’ rights, namely the Indigenous Peoples’
Rights Act (R.A. 9371) does not provide for specific provision for the protection of
their cultural properties.

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http://www.ph.undp.org/content/philippines/en/home/library/democratic_governance/Fa
stFacts-IPs.html



Through the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, National
Museum, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and local government units,
this bill shall create a comprehensive cultural archive, which shall organize and
provide an inventory of all cultural properties of the different ethno-linguistic
groups of the Philippines. This bill also mandates the payment of royalties for the
use of the cultural property of the indigenous groups.

To prevent possible abuses on the exploitation of our IPs’ cultural heritage,
this bill will be a source of their traditional intellectual property using the standards
of the conventional intellectual property system. This will also fill the gap in the
legal protection afforded to the works resulting from traditional knowledge and
apply the conventional forms of intellectual property like copyright, royalty, and
ownership.

In view of the foregoing consideration, approval of this bill is earnestly

sought.

(Ee Sasa

LOREN LEGARDA


Eighteenth Congress
Second Regular Session

HOUSE BILL No. 7811

Introduced by
REPRESENTATIVE LOREN B. LEGARDA

SAFEGUARDING THE TRADITIONAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS
PEOPLES
Be it enacted in the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippines in Congress
assembled:
SECTION 1. This Act shall be known as the “Traditional Property Rights of
Indigenous Peoples Act.”
SECTION 2. Declaration of Principles and Policies. - It is declared the policy of the
State to protect the traditional cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of the
Philippines; and safeguard the intrinsic values, whether tangible or intangible; and
to support traditional artists and artisans in their contribution to their respective
ethnic cultures and national heritage by ensuring that their rights are safeguarded.
SECTION 3. Definition of Terms. - For purposes of this Act, the following terms
shall be defines as follows:

a) “Commission” shall refer to the National Commission for Culture and the

Arts (NCCA);


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b) “Cultural agencies” shall refer to the following national government agencies
with their specific areas of responsibility: National Museum (cultural
property); the National Library (books); National Historical Institute
(Philippine history); National Archives (documents); Cultural Center of the
Philippines (culture and arts); and Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (language);

©) “Cultural heritage” shall refer to the totality of cultural property preserved
and developed through time and passed on to posterity;

qd

“Cultural property” shall refer to all products of human creativity by which a
people and a nation reveal their identity, including churches, mosques and
other places of religious worship, schools and natural history specimens and
sites, whether public or privately owned, movable or immovable, and
tangible or intangible.

e)

“Intangible cultural heritage” shall refer to the practices, representations,
expressions, knowledge, skills as well as the instruments, objects and artifacts
associated therewith, that communities, groups and individuals recognize as
part of their cultural heritage, such as (1) oral traditions, languages,
expressions; (2) performing acts; (3) social practices, rituals and festive events;
(4) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; and (5)
traditional craftsmanship;

f) “Intangible cultural property” shall refer to the people's learned processes
along with the knowledge, skills and creativity that inform and are developed
by them, the products they create and the resources, spaces and other aspects

of social and natural context necessary for their sustainability;


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g) “Registry” shall refer to the Philippine Registry of Cultural Property which is
the registry of all cultural property of the country deemed of significant
importance to our cultural heritage as defined in RA 10066;

h) “Tangible cultural property” shall refer to a cultural property with historical,
archival, anthropological, archeological, artistic and architectural value, and
with exceptional or traditional production, whether of Philippine origin or
not, including antiques and natural history specimens with significant value;

“Tradition” shall refer to the beliefs, customs, practices, industries,

expressions, whether tangible or intangible, maintained and shared
differentially by society, and handed down from generation to generation.
Tradition in this respect is a continuum that change and may arise in time
shall not therefore be subject to time limitation;

j) “Community” refers to the congregation of people with social cohesion and
identity organized among common values interacting with intimacy and
reciprocity in a shared circumscribed location in units larger than a
household; and has more similarities in the types and forms of their material
goods;

k) “Indigenous peoples’ are people, communities and nations who claim a
historical continuity and cultural affinity with societies endemic to their
original territories. They have historically formed and still currently form the
minority/non-dominant sectors within majority-culture societies and are
intentioned towards preserving, reviving, and enhancing the efficacy,
cohesion, and uniqueness of their traditional social values and customary ties
along with a conscientious effort to transmit this knowledge to future

generations;


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1) “Derivative work” is one that is primarily a new work but incorporated some
previously published material. This previously published material makes the
work a derivative work under the copyright law. To be copyrightable, a
derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as
a “new work” or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making
minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work will not
qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes. The new material
must be original and copyrightable in itself. Titles, short phrases and format
for example, are not copyrightable;

m) “Communal ownership” refers to common ownership within a community;

n) “Royalty” refers to the payment to the holder of a patent or copyright or
resource for the right to use their property;

0) “Craft” describes the family of artistic practices within the decorative arts,
traditionally, is defined by their relationship to functional or utilitarian
products (such as sculptural forms in the vessel tradition) or by their use of
such natural media as wood, clay, glass, textiles and metal;

p) “Social process” refers to the means by which culture and social organization
change or are preserved due to process or practice;

q) “Oral expression” refers to the expression uttered by the mouth; spoken; oral
testimony or transmitted by speech;

1) “Rites” refer to formal or ceremonial acts or procedures prescribed or

customary in religious or other solemn use, or a particular form of system of
religious or other ceremony;

s) “Rituals” refer to an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or

other rite, a system or collection of religious or other rites; observance of set


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u)

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forms in public worship; a prescribed or established rite, ceremony,
proceeding or service: the ritual of the dead; prescribed, established or
ceremonial acts or features collectively, as in religious services; any practice or
pattern of behavior regulating social conduct;

“Performance” refers to the acting out of a ceremony, play, piece of music,
etc, the execution or accomplishment of work acts, feats, etc, a particular
action, deed or proceeding the manner in which or the efficiency with which
something reacts or fulfills its intended purpose, and not necessarily as part
of the social process;

“Ownership” refers to the legal right of possession or proprietorship; the
state, relation, or fact of being an owner; also, the rights or interests of an
owner, ownership especially by a single person that is free of any
encumbrances or limitations other than statutory;

“Culture” - The UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies (Mexico,
1982) defines culture, in its widest sense, as the whole complex of distinctive
spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features that characterize a
society or a social group. This includes not only the arts and letters but also
modes of life, value systems, tradition and beliefs. Culture, however, can also
be looked at as an aggregate and internally inconsistent body of knowledge
and meanings, unevenly distributed among individuals of a community, and
acquired by these individuals through experiences and transactions in

everyday life.

SECTION 4. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) hereinafter

referred to as the Commission, shall implement the provisions of the Act.


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SECTION 5. Traditional cultural property, whether tangible or intangible, of all the
ethno-linguistic groups that make up the people of the Philippines shall not lapse
into public domain after 50 years from creation, and shall continue indefinitely to be
exclusive property of these ethno-linguistic groups that communally own them.
Traditional heritage, both tangible and intangible are to be held in perpetuity in
ethnic memory and considered valid as ethnic intellectual property.

SECTION 6. Under the guidance of the Commission and National Museum (NM),
or any other pertinent national cultural agency, the Local Government Units (LGU)
with the assistance of the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) shall
organize inventories of cultural properties of the different ethno-linguistic groups of
the Philippines that are distinctive, characteristic of or derived from their particular
traditional culture, to the exclusion of those of others and shall submit these to the
Commission thru the National Museum to establish communal ownership, and to be
registered under the group's name for protection within existing copyright law.
Further that these registries of the tangible and intangible cultural properties thus
accomplished shall be incorporated in the Philippines Registry of Cultural Property
(PRECUP) as established by Republic Act 10066 and administered by the
Commission.

SECTION 7. While recognizing that traditions change through time, the rights of the
ethno-linguistic groups to their intellectual property changing in continuum shall
retain original rights to these properties.

SECTION 8. The infusion of personal or individual variations on a traditional object
would result in a derivative work or craft, which is one that is primarily a new work
but incorporates some previously published material. A derivative work must be

different enough from the original to be regarded as a “new work” or must contain a


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substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little
substance to a pre-existing work will not qualify the work as a new version for
copyright purposes. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself.
SECTION 9. However, the rights of an ethno-linguistic group to a traditional item
will lapse into public domain in 50 years, if after such period, it is no longer in
production or used in cultural context within the society.
SECTION 10. Pursuant to the above, the Commission will create an office within its
structure to coordinate all efforts of government and private agencies that have
forms of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in making the above-mentioned
registry; and to undertake the safeguarding of national cultural heritage stipulated
therein that are viable.
SECTION 11. Reorganization. - With the approval of the Board, the Commission
shall have the authority to reorganize its structure and staffing pattern in order to
carry out its functions. The incumbents in the leadership structure of the existing
Commission shall automatically be upgraded to these analogous positions, with
respect to the rest of the personnel.
SECTION 12. Deposit and Notice. - Moral rights would vest upon creation; hence,
authorship would have to be established to avail of moral rights such as right of
attribution. Moral rights to ownership of newly created items by members of an
ethno-linguistic group should be registered with the Commission for protection
under copyright law. Copyright vests from the moment of creation; and registration
is one of the ways to prove authorship, although it is not exclusive.

a. The Commission thru the relevant government cultural agency, shall assist in

identifying works and attributing authorship, and further shall be responsible

for maintaining and populating this registry;


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b. The Commission shall assist the claimants and relevant government agencies
in resolving conflicts of ownership and attribution who will give permission
to people who wish to use the work upon discovery of the same in the
database;

c. The Commission shall assist relevant government agencies in the prosecution
of unauthorized use of intellectual property of indigenous peoples.

SECTION 13. Free, Prior and Informed Consent. - Free, prior and informed consent
for the use of indigenous peoples’ intellectual property should be articulated by a
defined authority that is provided with a circumscribed jurisdiction, associated with
the culture of an ethno-linguistic group. The corresponding elected official, as the
case may be, assisted by cultural experts, shall dispense the required free, prior and
informed consent for the item(s) in question for the concerned intellectual property
owners.

SECTION 14. Indigenous communal copyright (intellectual property) owners may
designate a society with legal personality to act in their behalf to enforce their
economic and moral rights;

SECTION 15. Royalties. - Indigenous communal copyright (intellectual property)
‘owners shall be compensated for the use of their work. The amount, process of
collecting and distributing this royalty and other pertinent details will be
determined by the Commission.

SECTION 16. Appropriations. - For the initial implementation of this Act, the
amount of Fifty Million Pesos (Php 50,000,000) is hereby appropriated and shall be
sourced from the President’s Contingent Fund.

SECTION 17. Implementing Rules and Regulations. - The Commission, in

consultation with other relevant cultural agencies mentioned in this Act, shall


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promulgate the implementing rules and regulations within ninety (90) days after the
effectivity of this Act.

SECTION 18. Penalties. - In addition to the penalties under existing laws, any
person found guilty of violating any provisions of this Act shall be imprisoned for a
term not exceeding ten (10) years or a fine not exceeding one hundred thousand
pesos (P100,000.00) or both such imprisonment and fine at the discretion of the
court.

SECTION 19. Repealing Clause. - The provisions of Philippine copyright law and
other related laws to the extent that they are inconsistent with this Act, are hereby
repealed or amended accordingly.

SECTION 20. Separability Clause. - If, for any reason, any part or provision of this
Act is declared invalid or unconstitutional, the parts or provisions not affected
thereby shall remain in full force and effect.

SECTION 21. Effectivity Clause. - This Act shall take effect fifteen (15) days
following its publication in the Official Gazette or in two (2) newspapers of general

circulation, whichever comes first.

Approved,