| Parallel imports of trademarks as a constantly controversial issue, involve the fields of not only intellectual property rights, but also trade in goods and market competition. The possible conflicts of interests triggered by such parallel imports include the conflict of interests between trademark owners and users, importers and exclusive licensees, as well as the conflict between the protection of trademarks and the freedom of market competition. Therefore, a diversified and multi-dimensional way of thinking and of application of laws is required regarding the coordination of trademark parallel imports.At the same time when the European Union is continuously trying to promote its system of internal market, the correspondingly established principle in relation to the treatment of trademark parallel importation has been influenced, to a very large extent, by the legislation of EU competition. On the one hand, the EU Competition Law targets to regulate the behavior of restricting parallel imports of trademarks which interferes the free movement of goods and distorts the environment of market competition; on the other hand, it provides the possibility of exemption to the conduct of anti-competition, which may prevent unreasonable parallel imports of trademarks including the acts of improper re-packaging, free-riding and etc. Meanwhile, the legislators of the EU Competition Law take discriminative attitude in dealing with the issue of extraterritorial parallel imports of trademarks in order to re-evaluate their pros and cons.Due to the long-term existence of a relatively low-price market in China with its process of legislation of competition law remained in early stages, the problem of parallel imports of trademarks in China has not been paid great attention to. As such, this paper attempts to propose some opinions and suggestions to the Chinese legislators regarding the issue of handling the problem of trademark parallel importation from the perspectives of both legislation and legal practice, by way of analyzing the impact of EU Competition Law on the parallel imports of trademarks in terms of both legislation and demonstration, revealing the intrinsic connection between them, and drawing some experiences from the practice of the EU Competition Law.This paper is composed of four chapters.The first chapter introduces the existing EU legislation on both trademarks and competition in respect of parallel imports of trademarks. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the framework structure of the general principle for the EU legislature to regulate the trademark parallel importation and of the EU Competition Law, with a view to building a necessary theory base for positive analysis in the subsequent chapters.The second and the third chapters consist of the nuclear parts of this paper. These two chapters, by means of lots of case-by-case analysis, aim at probing into the competitive rules adopted by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in dealing with trademark parallel importation cases, as well as the different outcomes resulting from the different approaches taken by the ECJ in treating the issue of trademark parallel importation either inside or outside the territory of the European Union. In addition, these two chapters discuss both the positive and negative impact of EU Competition Law on the parallel imports of trademarks, and also explain the interaction between the existence and exercise of trademark rights, and the cross relationship between the deduction of such principles as the exhaustion of trademark rights and competition law.The fourth chapter first researches the status quo of the trademark parallel importation in China at present, and then, with a view to introducing a solution to solve the problem of trademark parallel importation in China, proposes the author's humble opinions to the legislation and legal practice of competition law in China based on the enlightenment gained from the conclusion aforementioned regarding the EU Competition Law. |
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