Research On International Legal Protection Of Industrial Designs And The Improvement Of China's Relevant System

Along with the improving quality of people's lives and the increasingly fierce of market competition, industrial designs also increasingly show their economic value. It is beneficial for both the public and the domestic and overseas business to encouraging the adoption of a new design. To this end, as early as March 20, 1883, 11 countries signed the "Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property". According to"Paris Convention", the designs and patents, utility models and along with trademarks called industrial property. Since then, industrial designs, as a kind of property, were begun to be recognized by the community. In 1958, on the Lisbon meeting of revising "Paris Convention", the delegates decided to increase the Convention Article 5 in the fourth to make it clear that: "industrial design should be protected by all member states in the league." So far, there are more than 110 countries and regions promulgated the design laws or regulations all over the world. Article 25 of "Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights" clearly states: "Members shall provide for the protection of independently created industrial designs that are new or original."Although International Conventions consider industrial designs as a independent kind of intellectual property rights protection objects, whether "Paris Convention" or "TRIPS" do not require their members to have specific methods of the protection on industrial designs, nor require a specific type of law to protect industrial designs. According to the international conventions, different countries could use different laws or regulations to protect industrial designs. But in any case, as long as a member State provides protections of industrial designs, it is in line with the requirements of the Conventions.In order to encourage people to use new industrial designs in industry area, the first patent law of our country explicitly provides protections of industrial designs. However, the quality of industrial designs in our country is not high. There are large quantities of industrial designs, but the quality is not very good. To solve this problem, we need to clarify some understanding, define the protection scope of a industrial design patent, determine infringement fairly and accurately, improve the authorization standards of industry patent. Meanwhile, we could research and use for reference of foreign relatively mature design legal protection mode, to improve our design legal protection system.This article, with the title Research on International Legal Protection of Industrial Designs and the Improvement of China's Relevant System, consists three chapters.Chapter one defines the meaning of industrial design. Concept is the premise of judging and demonstrating. There are some so-called controversial problems just because the parties hold different opinions on the meaning of concept. Therefore, it is necessary to define the meaning of industrial design clearly before we study the legal protection of product designs. In order to settle this problem, this chapter first gives an overview on international development of industrial designs, and then introduces the definitions of industrial design both in typical legal modes and in our country.Chapter two introduces and analyzes the international practicing status of the protection of industrial design. This chapter mainly studies the protection ways of international conventions and typical legal modes. Firstly, study the requirements of international conventions on the protection of industrial designs. "Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property" gives protection on industrial designs. However, the convention doesn't give a definition of industrial design, or provide the right conditions for design. Also, the convention does not require its member countries to protect industrial design at a particular way. In 1994, "Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights" was promulgated, which was considered as a code on protection of Intellectual Property rights. There are specific articles for the protection of industrial designs. And TRIPS offers a standard on protection requirements, rights and right limited, duration of protection, and so on. Compared with"Paris Convention", Trips requires members give a higher protection on industrial design. Secondly, this chapter introduces the legal practices of protection on industrial design both in The United States and European Union. Now, The United State does not have a specific industrial design law. In the USA, the legal basis of protecting industrial design is Patent Law, Copyright Law and Trademark Law. December 12, 2001 EC council promulgated the"EC Council Design Act". The Act establish a unified field of design protection system, which covering the entire European Union. The Act is available in the European Union, and requires the member countries to apply the unanimous registration standard. Finally, studies the international conventions on industrial design protection and the legal protection systems in US and EU, analyses the advantage and disadvantage of the two legal protection modes, so that we could learn from them and improve our country's industrial design legal protection.Chapter three studies the current situation of our country's industrial design patent protection, and think over how to make the industrial design patent protection much better. In China, industrial design is included in the scope of protection of patent law, and the"Patent Law"grants a clearly definition on industrial design. Through the study on our country's industrial design patent protection system, find out the disadvantage in both authorized standards and tort identified. After finding out the questions, then analyses the reasons, and gives some advices to improve the legal protection of industrial design. The advices includes: Firstly, introduce lower standards of creativity; Secondly, appropriate to relax the limit product categories; Thirdly, overall judge and comprehensive grasp"of the same and approximate"; fourth, establish a graphics database design patent, and improve the preliminary review of the existing system.