Study Of Legal Issues Of Patents Of Technical Standards

Technical standards with patents results from the combination of patented technologies and technical standards. On one side, patents in technical standards represent advanced technologies and bring more welfare for human society than general technical standards. On the other side, many patented technologies have become the indispensable technical basis in respective fields. As a result, the related technical standards will include those patented technologies. Therefore, the emergence and development of technical standards with patents are realistic and reasonable.While patented technologies represent the private interests of the patent holders, technical standards are made for the sake of public interests. When patented technologies are incorporated into standards, there comes the conflict between these two interests. Therefore, this thesis is to explore the important legal issue on how to coordinate the conflict between these two interests: Is it possible to coordinate the conflict between these two interests in technical standards with patent? If yes, which legal principles should be applied? Etc.Aiming at this, in the first two chapters, the author discusses the definition, historical background, theoretical basis and legal role for the patented technologies and technical standards, respectively. The author emphasizes that the patented technologies represent legal attributes of private interests and technical standards represent legal attributes of public interests. This chapter lays a foundation for the discussion on legal issues in technical standards with patents in the following chapters.After that, the author analyzes the legal attributes of technical standards with patents, and raises an important problem associated with technical standards with patents: the conflict between the private interests involved with patent rights and public interests embodied in technical standards.The last chapter studies the solution to this legal right conflict. The author first analyzes from legal perspective the basic legal principle to solve this problem: the interest-balance principle. Through cases study for several famous lawsuits, the author studies in detail the application of the interest-balance principle in legal practice. With regards to the question that whether patented technologies should be included into compulsory standards, the author proposes her opinion and suggestions on the legislation and practical status quo in China.