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    Unilever Vs CA

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    Zusmitha Salcedo
    Unilever Philippines aired a TV commercial for its laundry product that Procter & Gamble Philippines alleged imitated its protected "tac-tac" visual. P&G filed for and was granted a preliminary injunction against airing the commercial by the trial court. The CA affirmed, finding no grave abuse of discretion. Unilever argued the injunction disposed of the main case without a trial. The Supreme Court upheld the injunction, finding the limited airing period of commercials could make a permanent injunction illusory later, justifying interim relief to preserve the status quo until full trial. As Unilever was given opportunity to oppose the injunction, there was no grave abuse of discretion.

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    Unilever Vs CA

    Uploaded by

    Zusmitha Salcedo
    344 views1 page
    Unilever Philippines aired a TV commercial for its laundry product that Procter & Gamble Philippines alleged imitated its protected "tac-tac" visual. P&G filed for and was granted a preliminary injunction against airing the commercial by the trial court. The CA affirmed, finding no grave abuse of discretion. Unilever argued the injunction disposed of the main case without a trial. The Supreme Court upheld the injunction, finding the limited airing period of commercials could make a permanent injunction illusory later, justifying interim relief to preserve the status quo until full trial. As Unilever was given opportunity to oppose the injunction, there was no grave abuse of discretion.

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    case digest

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    Unilever-vs-CA

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    Unilever Philippines aired a TV commercial for its laundry product that Procter & Gamble Philippines alleged imitated its protected "tac-tac" visual. P&G filed for and was granted a preliminary injunction against airing the commercial by the trial court. The CA affirmed, finding no grave abuse of discretion. Unilever argued the injunction disposed of the main case without a trial. The Supreme Court upheld the injunction, finding the limited airing period of commercials could make a permanent injunction illusory later, justifying interim relief to preserve the status quo until full trial. As Unilever was given opportunity to oppose the injunction, there was no grave abuse of discretion.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    344 views1 page

    Unilever Vs CA

    Uploaded by

    Zusmitha Salcedo
    Unilever Philippines aired a TV commercial for its laundry product that Procter & Gamble Philippines alleged imitated its protected "tac-tac" visual. P&G filed for and was granted a preliminary injunction against airing the commercial by the trial court. The CA affirmed, finding no grave abuse of discretion. Unilever argued the injunction disposed of the main case without a trial. The Supreme Court upheld the injunction, finding the limited airing period of commercials could make a permanent injunction illusory later, justifying interim relief to preserve the status quo until full trial. As Unilever was given opportunity to oppose the injunction, there was no grave abuse of discretion.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 1

    Unilever Philippines, Inc. vs.

    CA and Procter and Gamble Philippines


    GR 119280 August 10, 2006
    Facts:
    On August 24, 1994, Procter and Gamble Inc. filed a complaint for injunction with damages against Unilever alleging that
    Unilever substantially and materially imitated the aforesaid "tac-tac" key visual in blatant disregard of its intellectual
    property rights. This occurred when Unilever started airing a 60 second television commercial "TVC" of its "Breeze
    Powerwhite" laundry product called "Porky” and the said commercial included stretching visual presentation and sound
    effects almost identical or substantially similar to P&GP’s "tac-tac" key visual.
    On August 26, 1994, Judge Gorospe issued an order granting a temporary restraining order and setting it for hearing on
    September 2, 1994 for Unilever to show cause why the writ of preliminary injunction should not be issued. On appeal,
    the CA rendered its decision finding that Judge Gorospe did not act with grave abuse of discretion in issuing the disputed
    order.
    Unilever now argues that the writ of preliminary injunction was issued by the trial court (and affirmed by the CA)
    without any evidence of private respondent's clear and unmistakable right to the writ. Petitioner further contends that
    the preliminary injunction issued against it already disposed of the main case without trial, thus denying petitioner of
    any opportunity to present evidence on its behalf.
    ISSUE:
    Is preliminary injunction proper to enjoin the airing of TV commercials? (YES)
    Held:
    Yes. There was extreme urgency for the court a quo to act on plaintiff’s application for preliminary injunction. The airing
    of TV commercials is necessarily of limited duration only. Without such temporary relief, any permanent injunction
    against the infringing TV advertisements of which P&GP may possibly succeed in getting after the main case is finally
    adjudicated could be illusory if by then such advertisements are no longer used or aired by petitioner. It is therefore not
    difficult to perceive the possible irreparable damage which P&GP may suffer if respondent Judge did not act promptly on
    its application for preliminary injunction.
    Injunction is resorted to only when there is a pressing necessity to avoid injurious consequences which cannot be
    remedied under any standard compensation. As correctly ruled by the CA, there was an extreme urgency to grant the
    preliminary injunction prayed for by P&GP considering that TV commercials are aired for a limited period of time only. In
    fact, this Court takes note of the fact that the TV commercial in issue ― the Kite TV advertisement ― is no longer aired
    today, more than 10 years after the injunction was granted on September 16, 1994.
    The sole objective of a writ of preliminary injunction is to preserve the status quo until the merits of the case can be
    heard fully. A writ of preliminary injunction is generally based solely on initial and incomplete evidence. 9Thus, it was
    impossible for the court a quo to fully dispose of the case, as claimed by petitioner, without all the evidence needed for
    the full resolution of the same. To date, the main case still has to be resolved by the trial court.
    The issuance of a preliminary injunction rests entirely on the discretion of the court and is generally not interfered with
    except in cases of manifest abuse. There was no such abuse in the case at bar, especially because petitioner was given
    all the opportunity to oppose the application for injunction. The fact was, it failed to convince the court why the
    injunction should not be issued. Thus, in Santos v. Court of Appeals, we held that no grave abuse of discretion can be
    attributed to a judge or body issuing a writ of preliminary injunction where a party has not been deprived of its day in
    court as it was heard and it exhaustively presented all its arguments and defenses.

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