Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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** Per Special Order No. 545, dated December 16, 2008, signed by Chief
Justice Reynato S. Puno, designating Associate Justice Minita V. ChicoNazario to
replace Associate Justice Renato C. Corona, who is on leave.
*EN BANC.
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RESOLUTION
YNARESSANTIAGO, J.:
On February 27, 2006, this Courts First Division
rendered judgment in this case as follows:
IN LIGHT OF ALL THE FOREGOING, the petition is
GRANTED. The assailed Orders of the Regional Trial Court and
the Decision of the Court of Appeals are REVERSED and SET
ASIDE. The Regional Trial Court is directed to issue an order
granting the motion of the petitioner to quash the Amended
Information.
SO ORDERED.1
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1Rollo, p. 728.
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SEPARATE OPINION
CORONA, J.:
The bone of contention in this case is: who owns the
telephone calls that we make? If respondent Philippine
Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) can claim
ownership over them, then petitioner Luis Marcos P.
Laurel (Laurel) can be charged with theft of such telephone
calls under Article 308 of the Revised Penal Code. If PLDT
does not own them, then the crime of theft was not
committed and Laurel cannot be charged with this crime.
One view is that PLDT owns the telephone calls because
it is responsible for creating such calls. The opposing view
is that it is the caller who owns the phone calls and PLDT
merely encodes and transmits them.
The question of whether PLDT creates the phone calls
or merely encodes and transmits them is a question of
fact that can be answered by science. I agree with Justice
Consuelo YnaresSantiago that, while telephone calls take
the form of electrical energy, it cannot be said that such
[telephone] calls were personal properties belonging to
PLDT since the latter could not have acquired ownership
over such calls. PLDT merely encodes, augments,
enhances, decodes and transmits said calls using its
complex infrastructure and facilites.
In my view, it is essential to differentiate between the
conversation of a caller and recipient of the call, and the
telephone service that
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CONCURRING OPINION
TINGA, J.:
I do not have any substantive disagreements with the
ponencia. I write separately to flesh out one of the key
issues behind the Courts present dispositionwhether the
Philippine Long Distance Company (PLDT) can validly
claim ownership over the telephone calls made using its
telephone services. As the subject Amended Information
had alleged that petitioners had unlawfully and
feloniously take, steal and use the international long
distance calls belonging to PLDT, said information could
have been sustained only if its premise were accepted that
PLDT indeed owned those phone calls.
I.
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II.
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7 Id., at p. 254.
8 Id., at p. 255. Emphasis not mine.
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10See e.g. People v. Bustinera, G.R. No. 148233, 8 June 2004, 431
SCRA 284, 291, citing People v. Sison, 322 SCRA 345, 363364 (2000).
11 When a person speaks into a telephone, the sound waves created by
his voice enter the mouthpiece. An electric current carries the sound to the
telephone of the person he is talking to. See How the Telephone Works, at
http://areaonline.com/phone/telworks.html.
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12 Id., at p. 273.
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