Study On Antimonopoly Regulation Of Patent Pool

Patent pool refers to the agreement of two or more patentees for licensing their patents to the third party or licensing between each other. The patents in patent pool can be divided into: essential patent and non-essential patent, competitive patent, complementary patent and blocking patent. Patent pool is a kopis. The positive role of patent pool is:clear the blocking patent, reduce the cost of licensing transaction, advance the efficiency of licensing, avoid the costly infringement litigation, share the risk, integrate the complementary patents, promote the implementation of technical standards. The negative role of patent pool is:impede the innovation, cover up the invalid patent, restrict the competition between the leaguers in the patent pool. Regulating the patent pool only by the principle of civil law-the prohibition of abusing rights, patent law, contract law and other relevant legislation in China is hardly enough. Antimonopoly law should be used to regulate the patent pool. Analysis of patent pool is based on the definition of the goods market the markets of technology and innovation markets. Analysis of patent pool generally adopted the rule of reason to compare both the positive effect and the negative effect. The patent pool can be concluded restricting market competition when the negative effect outweigh the positive effect. Patent pool act through horizontal agreement, vertical agreement and abusing of dominant position. Horizontal agreement of patent pool includes fixing price, reduce output, allocation of markets and group boycotts. Vertical agreement of patent pool includes resale price maintenance and exclusive license. Abuse of dominant position includes refuse to permission, excessive pricing, tying, price discrimination and grant back. China should learn from the legislation and practices of United States and the European Community to improve antimonopoly law of China on the issue of patent pool.