Research On Prior User Right In Patent Law

Under the historical background that a new round of technological and industrial revolutions is getting ready all over the world, technological innovation is increasingly becoming the main driving force for national development. As an extremely exclusive right, intellectual property will surely become the powerful weapon to protect technological innovation achievements. However, as the core of the intellectual property system, the patent system will become the strongest tool for protection of scientific and technological achievements due to its higher degrees of monopoly, more prominent innovativeness and more direct economic nature. Nevertheless, precisely because of this kind of monopoly and commercial nature of patent right, excessive use of rights by right holders for economic interests may easily occur, thus fair market competition from their competitors are limited, which goes against the original intention of legislation of the patent system. For this, the prior user right system in patent law can effectively fight against the excessively-used patent right, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of rightful market competitors, and maintain an equitable balance between rights of patentees and prior user right holders.There are mainly five parts in this paper:The first part includes case induction and focus of dispute. The prior user right system that will be studied in this paper is introduced by descriptions of real case of Xiaozhong Wang sue Zhonggao compony patent infringment; based on this, problems existing in the prior user right system of our country are explained by establishing the focus of dispute of case--how to reasonably define prior user right,and commenting on the court trials.Part two is the theoretical overview of the prior user right system. Based on the concept and legal basis of the prior user right, this part sets forth the legislative value of the prior use right system,to maintain an equitable balance between rights of patentees and prior use right holders and encourge the ppratical application of science and technology innovation and patent technology; meanwhile, through contrastive analysis on mainstream viewpoints regarding nature of the prior user right in current theoretical cycle, biases and reasonable aspects of different viewpoints are summarized.In part three, problems existing in the prior user right system of our country are analyzed and discussed. This part carries out analysis from the aspects of technical scope, sources of technology, necessary preparation and original scope in the prior user right system of our country. Deficiencies existing in legislation of our country are introduced via viewpoints of various scholars and juridical practices, such as not clearly specified whether contain the technical features of the "equivalent", and there is no clear range of technology source, necessary preparation is not reasonable and the selectivity of "material requirement" demand is too high, the original scope too narrow, etc.,and at the same time, the author offers his suggestions for future improvement.The fourth part conducts contrastive analysis on the overseas prior user right systems. By summarizing the concept, law-making stipulation, scope of right and establishment condition of prior user right systems in Japan, America and Germany, reasonable aspects in legislation of prior user right systems overseas compared to that in our country are obtained, and thus to provide helpful reference for making up for legislative deficiencies in our country.Part five is the conception for perfect legislation of the prior user right system in our country. Based on all the parts mentioned above and by summarizing the problems in legislation of prior user right in our country, carrying out the analysis of their drawbacks and illuminating the reasonability in legislation overseas, the goal of amendments to the prior user right system in our country is obtained in this part, and under the guidance of it, some proposals regarding amendments to existing legal systems are put forward.Existing problems in prior user right system are summaried, nalyzed and discussed in this paper with the help of typical case; meanwhile, by the aid of document analysis method, method of camparative analysis and the empirical analysis method, this paper strives to exound thoroughly the existing problems in prior user right system in our country and put foward reasonable opinions and suggestions on this basis.