King Solomon, in deciding the dispute between two mothers in the Book of Genesis, looked beyond technicalities and subtleties of human laws and human reasoning. He employed wisdom, conscience and a moral compass to come up with the right, wise judgment.
Thus, the problem was solved, quickly and easily. Solomon found out who the real mother was. Sanity prevailed over “legalism” (and politics).
Television and Production Exponents (Tape) Inc. is the registered/legal owner of the trademark Eat Bulaga. But who owns Eat Bulaga apart from the trademark? And to whom should the trademark go?
Obviously, TVJ vs. Tape is a battle that goes far more than a dispute over who owns the trademark. It is about the legitimacy and ethicality of ownership of the child or of the program. If the mother is the mother by blood, what is it in the child that the mother does not own, much less if the mother has never left/abandoned the child?
Now who’s the real mother of Eat Bulaga? Is it Tape who owns it on paper? Or is it Tito, Vic and Joey (TVJ) who themselves are the very heart and soul of Eat Bulaga; they who breathe and own every bit and part of it (not just the name) as originators and pioneers of the show in every sense/aspect of its existence? Tape, for its part, can only own and keep its Intellectual Property Office (IPO) paper at best -- but just for now that the IPO hasn’t decided yet on the case.
Eat Bulaga has been around for over four decades and its name has been synonymous with TVJ from the very outset. In contrast, most television viewers have never heard of Tape but just until recently when its squabble with TVJ erupted in the media.
The longest-running noontime show was birthed, nurtured and made to grow and endure by TVJ from its infancy to its adult stage, until its 44th birthday this month of July, which would be celebrated on the 29th (sans the celebrants, oddly) by a new show that wrongly/unjustly and awkwardly uses the program’s title.
What I know about tapes is that they belong to dispensers and vice versa. The same is true with Eat Bulaga as belonging to TVJ and vice versa, regardless of Tape.
I don’t watch Eat Bulaga and the other noontime shows. My interest in writing on the issue is not in any way about fondness for Eat Bulaga or disdain for its copycat, but rather on sharing some tenable, sagacious thoughts surrounding a seemingly intricate, complex situation -- to enlighten everyone, with the hope that by doing so, I may contribute to the transformation of our justice system, should authorities or our magistrates get to read this.
The case of TVJ vs. Tape is a case wherein “justice” is pitted against “law.” And it is exactly the same case as in the numerous, countless court cases (past and present) wherein miscarriage of justice was and is being committed which resulted and would result in rendering wrong, preposterous, blind decisions.