The Legal Regulation For Patent Rights Abuse

Since China's accession into the WTO, foreign-related patent rights disputes have been on the increase. Some multi-national corporations abuse patent rights and try to constrain Chinese companies'reasonable competition, which is to the detriment of the Chinese market competition order. Regrettably, the current Patent Law and its relevant regulations can not exercise effective restriction over abuse of patent rights. In order to maintain the sound development of China's economy, it is thus imperative to improve the laws regarding the control of patent rights abuse. Chinese law scholars have proposed different views and suggestions over intellectual rights abuse including patent rights abuse. The majority of them hold that anti-trust law should be set up to exercise effective control over intellectual rights acts, constrain intellectual rights abuse and limitation of competition. However, confronted with a vast variety of abuse forms, anti-trust law fails to have universal application, since some types of patent rights abuses do not violate anti-trust law. As a result, the key to the application of anti-trust law is to determine whether an act is in violation. There are both differences and links between patent rights abuse and market monopoly abuse, therefore, a clear definition of both must be made before the management of patent rights abuse according to law. In addition, in light of the experience of China's law enforcement and justice, the initiation of anti-trust investigation procedure and litigation procedure is still in infancy, thus requiring the test of time for anti-trust law to play an effective role. Patent Law and other relevant regulations have provisions constraining the exercise of patent rights. Employed properly and improved further, these laws and regulation can also constrain patent rights abuse. The current laws and regulations have attached great emphasis on the protection of holders of patent rights and failed to put equal emphasis on its constraint. It is therefore necessary to amend and improve Patent Law, strengthen its role in constraining patent rights abuse, and builds an intellectual rights system that tapers to China's actual conditions, so that a balanced interest between holders of patent rights and the public could be achieved.