Opinion
There is a website using the Budots Media Philippines name that is not ours. Lookalike domain, our brand, our portfolio's client names, even our production-house story. This page exists so our clients, partners and future investors know exactly which Budots Media they are dealing with.
BUDOTS MEDIA was founded by Bart Sakwerda in Cebu in 2014 — years of receipts: DOT and DOT7 campaigns, London and Poland offices, the expedition films, the drone surveys, the archive. In the early 2020s a former associate began operating under our name, presenting our track record as his own to clients who had no easy way to tell the difference.
A brand is the one asset you cannot lock in a cabinet. In any fast-growing market — the Philippines included — enforcement is slow and imitation is cheap. Your only real defenses are paper and publicity.
What we learned, and what any founder — foreign or Filipino — building in a market with slow IP enforcement should hear: register your trademarks before you need them, in every jurisdiction you touch. Keep your incorporation, domain and social-account ownership under the founding entity, never under an individual. Put your history in public, dated, third-party places — press, archives, client attestations — so the record defends itself. And when imitation happens, respond in public with facts rather than in private with anger.
The official Budots Media channels are listed in the footer of this site and at facebook.com/budots.media. If you were approached by anyone claiming to represent Budots Media, verify against those channels — or write to us directly.
We have chosen not to name individuals on this page.
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