By Herbert Vego
REMEMBER when this writer first wrote about the unusual case of a royal couple — Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle of the United Kingdom (UK) – engaging Ilonggo entrepreneur Victor Martin J. Soriano in a legal battle over copyright?
Using this space, I expressed disbelief that Prince Harry and his wife Meghan – who are said to enjoy a net worth of $30 million dollars – would run after a small Filipino entrepreneur.
And so we waited with bated breath for a seemingly Goliath-vs.-David mismatch but to no avail, probably because the complaining royal family had foreseen an imbroglio that would put them in a bad light. Anyway, the fight has ended in our countrymate’s favor.
“Case dismissed” was how the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPO) in Taguig City junked the petition of Prince Harry’s Archewell Foundation to disapprove the application of Soriano to use “Archewell Harvatera” as the brand name of his tawas-based deodorant.
It all started with UK based Cobblestone Lane LLC and local counterpart Federis & Associates Law Office questioning before the IPO Soriano’s alleged branding of his product after the prince’s foundation.
Our Pinoy entrepreneur begged to disagree, arguing that Archewell Harvatera as a brand of a local deodorant does not compete with the Prince’s charitable Archewell Foundation. Hence, they could not be confused with each other.
The noun Harvatera, incidentally, reminds us of the Filipino slang “harbat” which means “to snatch.”
Soriano recalled, however, “I coined the term harvatera to mean someone who works hard to earn money, like those people working in Macau casinos.”
Thus, the legal office of the IPO asked the Prince’s legal panel to file a verified notice of opposition, specifying the date December 28, 2020 as the deadline. By defaulting way beyond that deadline, the Prince lost his case.
Prince Harry had probably lost interest in pursuing the case anyway. Failure of his lawyers to file the said verified notice prompted Atty. Christine Pangilinan-Canlapan, director III of the IPO, to issue an order dismissing the case and requesting the Bureau of Trademarks for corresponding action.
Sought for reaction, Martin Soriano told this writer that he is happy over the decision but would rather not hurry with his next move – which is to proceed with the delayed brand registration of his product – “because of my respect for The Queen. I am still waiting for the last word from Buckingham.”
The Queen, of course, is Queen Elizabeth of the UK, the grandma of Prince Harry.
I take it to mean that only the Queen could change his mind. Who knows? She might even suggest a better name. Anybody else in Martin’s shoes would want to be so Queen-humbled.
Soriano, a licensed importer/dealer of cosmetic products under the trade name Strong Wind Trading, is not the only Filipino businessman using the brand Archewell. It is also a jewelry brand popularized by jeweler Gina Sarabia Espinosa, the wife of former Iloilo City mayor Jose Espinosa III.
May I reiterate once more something about Martin Soriano that today’s younger people have missed?
The guy – whose age today I would rather not guess — astounded the swimming world when, on August 7, 1994, he swam the Iloilo-Guimaras Strait continuously – a distance of 4.2 nautical miles (7.7 kilometers) for the record. To this day after 27 years, no one else has equaled or exceeded the same feat.
Given the opportunity, would the older Martin repeat that feat?
He has probably one valid excuse not to: The strait has become so polluted it would no longer be healthy to accept the challenge. It was where an oil tanker sank and spilled oil in 2006.
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MORE POWER BEGS FOR CUSTOMERS’ PATIENCE
IT is impossible to please everybody, as the management of MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) has found out in its first 15 months of operation as distribution franchisee for Iloilo City.
In fact, MORE Power President Roel Z. Castro, in radio interviews, waxed sympathetic to individuals who could not cope with paying bills because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The usual misconception is that the distribution utility (DU) amasses so much profit from its customers that it can sustain temporary losses. The truth of the matter is that it gets only around 10 percent of the payments collected; it remits the generation charges to power generators.
In fairness, MORE Power aims to further lower power cost with the operation of its new 69-kilovolt (kV) switching station in Barangay Banuyao, La Paz that would directly connect all its substations to the transmission lines of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).
“We would therefore be open to offers from power generators not only in the region but all over the Philippines,” MORE Power president and chief operating officer Roel Castro told us “competitive selection process (CSP)”.
The CSP will enable the company to buy electricity from power producers offering the list prices at a given time effective January 2022.
As of now, MORE Power is still under contract to buy 70 percent of its power supply from Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) and 30 percent from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).
In this month of May, MORE’s residential rate averages PHP 9.73, still the lowest in the region. (hvego@yahoo.com
