CHAPTER IV

WORKS NOT PROTECTED

SEC. 175. Unprotected Subject Matter

       Notwithstanding the provisions of Section 172 and 173, no protection shall extend, under this law, to any idea, procedure, system method or operation, concept, principle, discovery or mere data as such, even if they are expressed, explained, illustrated or embodied in a work; news of the day and other miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information; or any official text of a legislative, administrative or legal nature, as well as any official translation thereof. (n) 

SEC. 176. Works of the Government

       176.1. No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such work for profit. Such agency or office may, among other things, impose as a condition the payment of royalties. No prior approval or conditions shall be required for the use of 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 and in meetings of public character. (Sec. 9, first par., P.D. No. 49) 

       176.2. The Author of speeches, lectures, sermons, addresses, and dissertations mentioned in the preceding paragraphs shall have the exclusive right of making a collection of his works. (n) 

       176.3. Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions, the Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest or otherwise; nor shall publication or republication by the government in a public document of any work in which copy right is subsisting be taken to cause any abridgment or annulment of the copyright or to authorize any use or appropriation of such work without the consent of the copyright owners. (Sec. 9, third par., P.D. No. 49)