Legal Regulation Of Patent Parallel Import

Nowadays, a new problem faced by many countries is that if the patent parallel import has infringement on the patent owner's rights in the importing countries. This problem is related to the dedicate balance between the benefits of patent owner and the benefits of the public. On the one hand, permitting parallel import means impairing the protection of the patent, on the other hand, forbidding parallel import would damage the benefits of the public. The key point to the solution is to find out how to make a balance between the benefits of patent owner and the public. As the international trades are developing, especially with more and more protection given to intellectual property rights, we must make a legal response to the patent parallel imports. But now neither the law nor the authority adjudge in China could give us an answer to the validity of the patent parallel imports. So whether in the angle of theory or practice, it is of great importance to make a forward-looking research of legislation and have discussion about the countermeasure in practice.This paper starts from the rights conflict and benefits contradiction which could not be avoided in patent parallel imports. Next it reviews the legislated and judicial practice in the international treaties and some other countries, which based on the basis of the principle rights harmonizing and restricting. And then, this paper designs a dualistic structure that formed by the rights exhaustion principle and the rights restriction principle. At last, as far as China is concerning, it puts forward some advises on China's legislation to the patent parallel imports.This main content is divided into four chapters, in addition to Preface and Conclusion. The first chapter mainly describes the fundamental problems of patent parallel import, in which the author firstly clarifies the definition and the character of parallel import, and then analyzes the reason of parallel import's appearance. At last, the author analyzes the essence of the patent parallel import, and raises two ways of regulation. In the second chapter, the author reviews the TRIPs(trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights)Agreements, and the legislated and judicial practice in American laws and the European Union laws. In spite of that, the author also clarifies the different applicability of the rights harmonizing principle and rights restricting principle. The third chapter focuses on the theory development of patent parallel import. Based on the theory experience, the author concludes the trend of thedevelopment of patent parallel import regulation. The fourth chapter is concerning the current provisions of our country and some suggestions of legislation. The author analyzes the choices which we can make, raises some constructive proposals according to the reality of China and hopes that will do good to the legislation of patent parallel import in our country.