On The Balance Of Interests In Patents

During the process which the patent system born and develop, it can be found that as an incentive mechanism, the patent system has played a very important role whether in law or in the economy. The patent system is a key system which exploits the knowledge resources. By determining the right that people demand for patents information, the patent system adjust those interest which born in the process that people create and use the patent information. So that it stimulate innovation, promote economic development and social progress.This paper is divided into four parts.The first part introduces the significance of the patents, focusing on the history for the emergence and development history of patents and its social function. The patent system was born in the late feudal time and the capitalism time. The patent system has been established because of the interaction of production innovation, development of productivity, improvement of the market economy, the formation for law culture. Patents has important social functions, mainly, for example, to encourage inventions ,that the patent system protect the interests fully of the inventor by legal ,to give the inventor a monopoly right for a certain period of time, make him get the benefits from the process of using the patent himself or allowing others using the patent. Thus, achieve the commercialization of the patent and benefit the people; rationally adjust the pattern of interests, that the patent system adjust numerous of subjects who are related to the interests, the patent inventors, the patent owners, the patent users and the societal public, to protect the inventor's legitimate rights, the patent owner and the patent user's fitting rights and interests; the rational spread and configuration of patent information, that make the patent information spread quickly by the fast delivery of patent documents, speed up the pace of scientific and technological information dissemination; so that promote the industrialization of the industry, promote innovation and the transformation of the results, shows the value that the patent as a factor of production .The second part shows the expression of the patents. The stakeholders that the patent system adjusts are the patent inventors, the patent owners, the patent users and the societal public. They have their own different benefit appeals, the reasonable interest demands should be protected and supported at law, on the opposite, for those unreasonable benefit appeals the law should not recognize or protect. From the analysis that different stakeholders have different benefit appeals in the patent system, we can see that the patent system emphasis on dynamic use rather than regulating the attribution of the patent right statistically. Only applying the patent can we promote the technique and economic development, so that the various related subjects benefit from the patent system.The third part talks about the conflicts of interest in patents. The reason for conflict of interest comes from the contradiction between the private ownership of the patent information and the patent information's social attributes. The law give patents monopoly in order to stimulate economic development, however, the patent information has a natural proprietary with public product attributes. Because of this basic contradiction, on the system design, we have to balance the interests between patent holders and social public interests. The human society is an interest interactive community. Benefits make human society not only keep consistent, but also full of conflict. The difference and conflicts of interests is the roots for all the contradictions, struggles and upheavals in the society. Every society needs a set of rules adjust the relationship of interest, alleviate conflicts of interest. The patent system is just the legal system to balance the distribution of benefits. Conflict of interests manifests those between developed countries and developing countries internationally. In the fierce international competition, many countries make use of intellectual property rights as a national strategy, they think highly of the knowledge of gold-the intellectual property rights. They conduct and formulate national intellectual property strategy, seeking advantage in international competition, to grab greater economic benefits. Some developed countries which had mature intellectual property systems, as they have achieved status and interests, even make the intellectual property to be a tool for seeking national interests. The patentees make patents as a competitive tool to suppress the competitors, disrupt normal order of market competition, due to lack of adequate competitors, they make consumers bear unreasonable monopoly high prices, which undermines the public interest. The conflict of interest between the patentee and the public, take the patent drugs for example, it relates to human life and health, contain significant public interest properties. But the patent system is not perfect or almighty. It lets the patentees take the cost back and make profit in market transactions by granting them patents. Of course, price is determined by the market, and those will naturally be higher prices if he first occupy the business opportunities, or the drug effects well, however, when patients can't afford the drug, accessibility about drugs problems will be born, in this respect, contradictions between higher-priced drugs and the public health are abnormal sharp.The fourth part tells us the balance of interests in the patent. The transformation of the idea: We should abandon the individual-based idea which is under the guidance of the liberal concept right idea and turn to the concept of society standard that under the guidance of communalism right idea. The patent system should not remain in the instrumental and public policy level if we want to dispose rights and interests rationally, it should demonstrate the inherent fairness and justice, as well as the efficiency values. In modern society, the concept that the patents and its system are consistent should be changed. So that the idea of private interests above everything rooted from the pure liberalism and individualism needs to turn to the idea that the private interests and the interests of society should be treated as a whole. External patent restrictions: In order to keep the balance between personal interests and the social interests, the patent law restrains patents properly while it protects the interests of the patentee, in order to achieve balance of interests between personal interests and the public. Patent restriction is just restricting the way patentee use the right. Its purpose is to keep the balance between the patentee and the public. The balance of interests in justice: the Equivalence Principle is the principle that formulated whether the judge patent poses infringement, it is lodged by The Supreme People's Court of China in 2001 in. Regulate the abuse of patents: patent abuse is often the patentee's subjective intent of the act. The abuse of patent endangers the interests of others. Antitrust rules in the patent monopoly is necessary to act against a clear classification and definition ,such as what is the behavior that abuse of patent rights, what is the behavior of the joint to restrict competition and so on. Therefore, it is necessary to add items on patent abuse. The establishment of defense system about the abuse of patent will play a very important role in patent infringement suit.Anyway, by this analysis, the issue about balance is the eternal theme in the patent system, which is the soul of the patent system and runs through the entire patent system. No matter how perfectly the patent system is designed, we should be clear that the patent system has its inherent contradictions, and can only be balance but can't be completely eliminated. The balance between personal interests and the public, is related to the value of equity and justice. As the designers of the patent system, the government should be careful in legislation to carry out the interests and judge advantages and disadvantages to resolve contradictions and design the ideal patent system when facing the conflict between personal interests and the public. As the social economy development constantly change, the balance of the patent system will be constantly broken, we will decide whether reconstruct or modify the original balance system when facing the real situation, so balance is a long-term dynamic process.