Application Of Essential Facility Doctrine In Antimonopoly Law And Intellectual Property Law

Essential Facility Doctrine claims that when a monopolist have controlled a essential facility which is necessary to a competitor access to a market ,and the competitor's inability practically or reasonably to duplicate the essential facility, the monopolist have the duty of deal with the competitors. The"essential facility"is a facility which competitors are not able to access and practically or reasonably to duplicate and is necessary to a competitor access to a market.Essential Facility Doctrine developed from Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The application of Essential Facility Doctrine in intellectual property law and anti-monopoly law in America,European Community and Taiwan is applied widely. Application of Essential Facility Doctrine in Antimonopoly Law is a important measure which can promote competition in electricity power,internet and telegraph business. The business of infrastructure is of high dominant because of no alternative, so it can exclude competition on certain extent. Application of Essential Facility Doctrine in Intellectual Property Rights Law can restraint abuse of dominant position of the owner of intellectual property effectively. When a owner of patent formulate standard of business using its own patent or copyright, if the owner refuse to provide others access to the facility reasonably, other competitors will be excluded from upstream and downstream market. So the fair competition order will be damaged. Therefore the application of the Essential Facility Doctrine is necessary to intellectual property rights law and anti-monopoly law of our country.The regulations of the compulsory license of patent in our country and abuse dominant position in our anti-monopoly law make the appliance of Essential Facility Doctrine in our country feasible. Therefore, the author suggests that we lead the Essential Facility Doctrine into the intellectual property rights law and anti-monopoly law of our country, so that they can maintain the fair competition order of market.