IPOPHL bares 2022 copyright projects for creative economy’s recovery

The Intellectual Property (IP) Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) has set out six projects that seek to raise copyright awareness and support the faster economic recovery of under-resourced artists.

The 2022 projects are proposed by several artists and funded under the Bureau of Copyright and Related Rights’ (BCRR) Copyright Plus Program with an overall budget of P1.2 million. The Copyright Plus is BCRR’s flagship program aimed at helping marginalized creators realize the economic and cultural benefits of copyright and protection through registration.

“Our Copyright Plus Program will be a major enabler in equipping Filipino artists with sufficient knowledge on the full breadth of their copyright and related rights. It will fulfill the pursuit of our President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., who reiterated in his 1st State of the Nation Address the need to accelerate the recovery of Philippine artists,” Director General Rowel S. Barba said.

In his speech, Marcos cited IP rights issues as one of the challenges stifling the creative industry.

“IPOPHL will stand firm in helping realize the urgent national goal of uplifting Filipino artists, the very people to whom we owe our cultural pride and identity as President Marcos emphasized,” Barba added.

Enabling writers, dancers and painters

In Certain Seasons Mothers Write is a project of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Intertextual Division and the Philippine PEN in support of mothers and their written creations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project proponents reported observing a steady amount of male-written literary works online. Intertextual Division Officer-in-Charge Beverly W. Sy saw this gap as a window to highlight the stories of mothers and their struggles during the lockdown.

Dance of Disabilities is LikhaPH Outreach Program’s to explore and promote choreographic works that take in consideration the body’s physical limitations. The movements-based study to be made in cooperation with Sports Science experts. The project also aims to raise awareness of disabilities through dance.

The Indayog Summer Camp is a dance workshop held last April in Marikina City. It provided folk, ballet, contemporary, jazz, hiphop, ballroom, KPop and interpretative dance classes to the youth. Project proponent and artistic director Ronald Vincent Soliven was inspired by the parents in the city who cannot afford recreational classes for their children. The camp provided an avenue for children to discover arts, culture and copyright through dance.

The Freelance Writer’s Guild of the Philippines (FWGP), an organization of freelance writers from different parts of the Philippines, is producing an e-book titled Protect Writer’s Works to answer the most common questions the book industry has about IP.  Due to the gap of literary works supporting the protection of writers’s works, FWGP heeds to the call for more informative texts on intellectual property, copyright and formal contracts and agreements.

To bring appreciation to animators and digital technology professionals, Tuldok Animation is producing a short film Atin ‘to, which will be an animated documentary about developing creativity, original ideas and IP rights protection and awareness. The production is set to interview Filipino creatives and artists and share their stories in a cartoon format rendered in different animation styles.

Meanwhile, in the UNESCO Creative City of Baguio, local journalist Eufeldion M. Lobien led the Heroes Mural – Wall of Fame Project as the proponent.  The project is a collection of murals depicting notable Cordilleran athletes who have been key in building sports culture in the municipality. The mural is completed by Baguio artists in early July and can be enjoyed by residents and tourists.

BCRR Director Emerson G. Cuyo said that the 2022 line up of Copyright Plus projects is “inclusive of sectors who bring distinctive elements to their own crafts.”

He underscored how these sectors can benefit from learning that the BCRR’s registration service and promotional support “are within everyone’s reach,” aiming to empower local artists to become copyright ambassadors themselves.

Cuyo also revealed that the BCRR may soon be part of the Copyright Project under the World Intellectual Property Organization’s COVID-19 Response Initiative. The project aims to address the pandemic’s impact on education in remote areas of least-developed and developing countries by supporting access to textbooks and other educational reference materials.

“We continue to fight the battle against lack of IP rights information. In this fight, we believe that our incremental steps, such as Copyright Plus, sharing the stories of local artists and helping facilitate access to educational books, will contribute to the change we want for the balanced protection of copyright and IP rights as a whole,” Cuyo said.

The BCRR chief called on artists to propose potential Copyright Plus projects that can benefit their sectors. The submission of proposals will be accepted until August 5, 2022.