Study On Legal Regulation Of Patent Pool

In the era of knowledge economy, the competition for markets is competition of knowledge and technology, which presents as intellectual property rights. It is valued more and more that how to enhance the core competitiveness and propel enterprise development, by using of intellectual property system and intellectual property strategies. Among the numerous intellectual property strategies, patent pool gains more and more attention, due to its particular scale effect. Patent pool originated in America about150years ago, and has developed well in some western countries after more than one century of development, while also springing up rapidly in the developing countries that are poor in technique.Patent pool has positive effects such as eliminating patent encumbrance and reducing transaction cost, and also has negative effects such as impeding innovation and monopolizing the technology market. As a collection of patent, patent pool is born with technological superiority naturally. To patent pool, it is easy to abuse patent with the superiority, which could harm the interests of non-members and the general public, while seeking economic benefits or extending volume growth for its members. Taking legal regulation of patent pool is not only the demand of the principle of forbidding the abuse of rights and the theory of balancing of interests, but also realistic need.On one hand, as a technology importer in international technology market, our country suffered patent attacks from foreign patent pools frequently in recent years, which resulted in a big hit for some industries. On the other hand, in both high-tech areas and traditional industries, many enterprises are exploring how to implement the patent pool strategy in order to promote the development of proprietary intellectual property rights and enhance their competitiveness. With this background, doing research on patent pool and analyzing the current situation of legal regulation of patent pool in China is of great importance to industrial development and technology improvement.This thesis mainly discusses the issue of legal regulation of patent pool. consisting of five chapters besides the conclusion.The first chapter generalizes the basic theories of patent pool, which referring to its concept, characteristics, classification, its three phases of development, and its double effects. The second chapter states the necessity of legal regulation of patent pool from the respects of theoretical basis and realistic need. The third chapter introduces legislation of the U.S., EU, Japan and Taiwan Province on patent pool. The fourth chapter investigates the current situation of legal regulation of patent pool in China, firstly reviewing China’s relevant legislations applicable to regulating patent pool, and then pointing out the shortcoming. The last chapter gives some proposals for the improvement of the legal regulation of patent pool in China. Firstly, the IPR abuse of patent pool that would exclude or limit competition must be regulated by Anti-monopoly Law. Then Patent Law should perfect the clauses of forbidding patent abuse, to complement Anti-monopoly Law. In addition, considering patent pool’s particularity, it is feasible to establish a special review mechanism, to standardize and guide patent pool’s forming and operation, especially patent licensing.