On The Doctrine Of Exhaustion Of Copyright

After the copyright commodity has been put into the market with the agreement of the copyright proprietor, the copyright proprietor loses the control power on where it will be sold and how it will be used. Exhaustion of copyright is on the bases of the balance of interests between the author and society, and it is the law adjustment between the free movement of copyright commodity and copyright protection clash.Parallel import causes great controversy in the field of copyright and intellectual property. Parallel import can be defined as follows: In international trade if a copyright receives international protection or nations' bilateral protection, the third party can take the copyright commodity as freely importing trade commodity and sell the copyright commodity even without the agreement of the copyright proprietor. The conflict between parallel import and the protection of intellectual property is not only a legal problem, but also a problem concerning with the fields of science and technology, economy, trade and investment, etc. Up till now, the problem of parallel import related to international trade still causes great controversy in most countries, except that some regional organizations have reached unanimity on it for common interests.Each country has different attitude towards exhaustion of copyright and makes different stipulation to it. Most developed countries recognize it and make it as a principle in law. Because of the complex of exhaustion of copyright, most related universal copyright conventions don't make any stipulation to it, and the most important international convention at present "Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights" provides evasion to it, which shows the complex of the problem and means each country should settle the problem by itself.The copyright law in our country has no related stipulation on exhaustion of copyright, which has not been given enough attention by the people. But the problemon exhaustion of copyright has arisen in our country. The development of international economic integration and freedom of trade will inevitably give rise to the issue of parallel import, which is actually most complicated. The present study on exhaustion of copyright and parallel import is mostly confined to the introduction of the basic knowledge, or gives more emphasis to excavate and probe the negative effect. In this thesis, the author tries to make a multi-dimensional synthetic study o'n the theory and practice of the exhaustion of copyright from the angle of economics and law (jurisprudence, civil law, copyright law and comparative jurisprudence).The whole thesis is divided into four chapters: the first chapter mainly analyzes the cardinal theories about exhaustion of copyright from three aspects. The first one is to analyze the fundamental concepts of exhaustion of copyright and its law character. Exhaustion of copyright is closely related to the law character of copyright. Therefore, it is necessary to fully recognize the law character of copyright in traditional copyright theory. The second, it analyzes the theoretic basis of exhaustion of copyright. The exhaustion of copyright is based on the underlying theory of equilibrium of interest and free movement of goods. Furthermore, the principle of not abusing right is the basic spirit in civil law. The exhaustion of copyright is the important embodiment in copyright law by not abusing rights. The third, it introduces the developing history of the exhaustion of copyright. With the development and perfection of copyright law and the change of social vale choice, exhaustion of copyright has arisen and the exhausted right has changed in accordance with the development of science and technology.The second chapter discusses the scope of validity of exhaustion of copyright, including the scope of validity of right and the scope of validity of space. From the angle of the scope of validity of right, the right of issue is an indispensable item of copyright, and its exhaustion plays an active role in the bala...