Cyber libel prescribes in one year, and the year runs from discovery

Cyber libel prescribes in one year. The Supreme Court held En Banc in April 2026 that Article 90 of the Revised Penal Code governs, and that the year runs from discovery by the offended party, the authorities, or their agents, rather than from publication. The earlier fifteen-year figure is no longer the law.

One year, from discovery

Cyber libel prescribes in one year, counted from the day the offended party, the authorities, or their agents discovered the post.

That is settled. A Third Division decision of 11 October 2023 so held, and on 8 April 2026 the Court sitting En Banc denied both sides’ motions for partial reconsideration with finality, directing that entry of judgment issue immediately.¹ The En Banc Resolution restates the holding it affirms this way:²

the Court ruled that the crime of cyber libel in Section 4(c)(4) of Republic Act No. 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act, prescribes in one year from discovery thereof by the offended party, the authorities, or their agents, in accordance with Article 90, paragraph 4 and Article 91 of the Revised Penal Code.

Guidance written before April 2026 may state a fifteen-year period, which was applied in practice for about five years and is no longer the rule.

Where the one year comes from

Two articles of the Revised Penal Code set the period; the Cybercrime Prevention Act sets none.

Article 90, as amended in 1966, provides that “[t]he crime of libel or other similar offenses shall prescribe in one year.”³ Article 91 supplies the starting point:⁴

The period of prescription shall commence to run from the day on which the crime is discovered by the offended party, the authorities or their agents, and shall be interrupted by the filing of the complaint or information, and shall commence to run again when such proceedings terminate without the accused being convicted or acquitted, or are unjustifiably stopped for any reason not imputable to him.

The term of prescription shall not run when the offender is absent from the Philippine Archipelago.

That second paragraph matters in practice: time does not run while the offender is out of the country, so a complainant is not necessarily out of time merely because a year has passed on the calendar.

One published text is out of date on this point. The Supreme Court’s E-Library carries Act No. 3815 in its original 1930 text, in which article 90 reads that libel prescribes in two years. The one-year period comes from the amending statute of 1966, Republic Act No. 4661, and the amended article governs.³

The two longer periods that were argued

The fifteen-year figure came from reading cyber libel into a different paragraph of the same article, the one giving crimes punishable by afflictive penalties fifteen years, on the footing that section 6 of the Cybercrime Prevention Act raises the penalty by one degree. The Court held that paragraph 4 governs and paragraph 2 does not.⁵

A twelve-year figure had also been applied below, on the footing that cyber libel is an offense under a special law and so takes its period from the general prescription statute for special laws. That argument failed because cyber libel is not an offense under a special law: “Cyber Libel is therefore a crime defined and penalized by the RPC”, and the general statute “is not controlling because Section 1, in relation to Section 3 thereof, makes the said law applicable only if the offense is defined and penalized by a special law without its own prescriptive period”.⁵

Both arguments fail on a single proposition: cyber libel “is, in actuality, libel as defined and penalized under Article 353 in relation to Article 355 Revised Penal Code, and it is committed by publishing the defamatory remark online using a computer system or ICT.”⁶ A heavier penalty does not make it a different crime, and in the absence of a legislative act excluding cyber libel from the word “libel” in article 90, the one-year period applies as a matter of course.⁶

The earlier ruling that had been cited for fifteen years was an unsigned division resolution. The 2026 En Banc held that an unsigned resolution “is not doctrinal and is binding only on the parties thereto”, and that no principle of law may be laid down in one.⁷ On that footing there was no doctrine to reverse.

Discovery is not publication

The starting point matters to both sides.

The period runs from discovery. Publication counts only where the two coincide: the period “may be reckoned from the publication of the libelous matter only when it coincides with the date of discovery by the offended party, the authorities, or their agents.”⁸

The Court declined to presume that the subject of a post saw it when it went up. There is “no factual and legal basis to hold that the offended party may be presumed to have discovered or read an online defamatory material just because it is more widespread”, and no such presumption exists in the Code or among the disputable presumptions in the Rules.⁹ Nor does the constructive notice that attaches to a public registry transfer to a platform: “[t]he act of posting a libelous remark on Facebook is simply not the same as the registration of a document in a public registry.”⁹

An old post is therefore not automatically safe. What fixes the date is evidence of when the subject actually learned of it, and the Court identified the ordinary forms that takes: the offended party “may comment on or react to a defamatory post, threaten a libel suit, or otherwise act in a manner that demonstrates their discovery of the libelous material.”¹⁰ Both sides should preserve that material early.

Prescription is a defense, and it has to be proved

Prescription does not operate by itself. Unless prescription appears on the face of the Information, the accused carries the burden of proving that the crime has prescribed, which “requires the presentation of evidence and when necessary, the trial court must set a hearing thereon.”¹¹

Nor is it lost by going to trial. The accused “does not waive the defense of prescription despite arraignment”.¹¹

Each publication is its own offense

A single defamatory statement published several times “gives rise to as many offenses as there are publications. This is the ‘multiple publication rule’ which is followed in our jurisdiction”, under which “every time the same written matter is communicated such communication is considered a distinct and separate publication of the libel.”¹²

Applied online, a fresh publication of the same material by its author is a publication of its own, carrying its own one-year period from its own discovery. That is not the same as somebody else resharing a post, which on the authority in the companion article is not punishable at all. Whether editing an existing post restarts the period on the original is a further question again, and, as at the review date above, no Supreme Court ruling settles it.

The vote was eight to seven

The result was eight to seven. Seven justices would have held that the Cybercrime Prevention Act changes the nature of the offense and that the period is fifteen years, and that dissent is on the record and intact.¹³ The Court has also said that lengthening the period is “something for the Legislature, not this Court, to address.”¹⁴

One year is the law. It could be revisited, but a complainant should not wait on the strength of an older article saying fifteen. Whether a post is actionable in the first place is a separate question, and this is litigation work in which the period is often decisive.