Research On The Legal Issue About Parallel Import Of Products With The Same Trademark

Parallel import called gray market means genuine products brought into a country without the authorization of the trademark owner. It is a complicated topic relating to the intellectual property rights and international trade.In the international trade, the existence of commodity price difference and the economical profit actuation have inevitably caused the trademark product parallel import. Along with the economical globalization development, increasing number of involved disputes and the lawsuits have appeared, so many countries such as US, European Union, Japan all have managed to resolve the problem. Along with the consummation of our market economy system and entering WTO, such disputes will also certainly increase. This causes us to pay more attention to the question.Regarding this question, the theory mainly focuses in the argumentation between the principle of exhaustion of rights and principle of regional rights. The conflict between the parallel import and the protection of intellectual property rights in theoretically mainly manifests for the conflict of the two principles.Exhaustion of rights is the support rationale of parallel import. Under the principle of exhaustion of rights, intellectual property rights holders lose control over their own brands after the goods have been put on the market somewhere else by the trademark owner or with its consent. Its primary intention is to reduce the negative effects produced by the exclusive rights of the intellectual property rights holders, so as to ultimately avoid excessive monopolization and to boost free commodity circulation. The principle of territoriality is to object to the parallel import. The principle means when providing the protection to intellectual property rights, the protection degree of the intellectual property rights and the judicial relief way provided for the intellectual property rights holders completely lie on the certain country's law. So far the two principles are the important parallel theories in the law of intellectual property right as well as the opposite basic theories about the question of parallel import.Practice about the parallel legislation and administration of justice varies in various countries. And their attitudes and treatments to parallel imports changeconstantly with the development of each history. Even in the conventions there are not unified standards about this question yet.There are not specific regulations about the parallel import in the actual codes of our country. We must grasp the trends about the regulation of this question in the countries all over the world and international conventions, in order to adjust our own tactics in time, ultimately to protect our own interests.This paper describes the forming reason of this phenomenon and relevant basic theories after defines the question, and through the comparative analysis about other countries' contemporary administration, finally proposes the legal countermeasure of our country.