Every Teacher's Problem - Are Textbooks Protected by Copyright?

The short answer is ‘Yes’.

Under our Intellectual Property Code, books are protected as literary works:

SEC. 172. Literary and Artistic Works. – 172.1. Literary and artistic works, hereinafter referred to as "works," are original intellectual creations in the literary and artistic domain protected from the moment of their creation and shall include in particular 

(a)  Books, pamphlets, articles and other writings; 

xxx 

In any case, we must not assume that an entire book is original and therefore protected by copyright. We need to understand that only the original elements of a textbook are protected by copyright.

For example, any book on arithmetic will teach the reader about addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in the same way. This cannot change because the rules of basic math are practically permanent. These fixed lessons and rules may be considered part of the public domain because they have existed for as long as math itself and their originality has expired long ago.

Comparison of books in a copyright infringement case with the IP Office. (newsbytes.ph)

The original contribution of the author consists of the unique word problems, comments, insights, the book cover design, illustrations, photographs and any part of the book that may be considered original.

I remember a client some years ago who was accused of copyright infringement of an English textbook. I examined the older textbook and the updated version she wrote and found out that there was nothing to be worried about. The examples and illustrations were starkly different. The outline of the new book was similar to the old one but only because it was part of the specific guidelines set by the Department of Education. 

Schools and universities must also be careful when issuing work books they wish to sell as originals. There needs to be a regular department audit of the content of all these books to ensure that copyright infringement is avoided. 

How costly can this mistake be? Just last year, a school in Bulacan had to pay over half a million pesos in damages for copyright infringement. (Read the story here: Bulacan school ordered to pay P608,450 for copyright infringement)

A teacher cannot simply take pages from different sources and compile them all together into a single lesson plan or work book. The school or university will have to enter into a licensing agreement with the collecting society for authors and book publishers in order prevent itself from violating copyright laws. (Read more about collective licensing here: FILCOLS and the Collective Management of Copyright for Books in the Philippines)

In the case of law textbooks, all the statutes, cases and government issuances are considered unprotected material and thus belong to the public domain. The only parts that are protected by copyright are the personal commentaries, examples, illustrations, artwork, photographs and all parts that may be factually claimed as original by the author.

All in all, textbooks can be quite tricky because one needs to separate common knowledge and teaching methods from original work. Infringement in these cases will be less obvious and will require a page-by-page analysis in order to demonstrate that there was copying without permission.

Knowledge may be common but insight should be original.