Research On Trademark Parallel Imports In E-commerce

In the process of integration of world economy, parallel imports have become a common phenomenon and also an extremely important and complex issue in the field of international trade related to intellectual property. Laws and regulations of parallel imports have long been a hot topic in the academia and a tough problem judges and lawyers encounter in the judicial practice. In the meantime, the e-commerce industry has been booming in the past 20 years, especially the past 10 years. B2B, B2C, C2C and other trading patterns have become pervasive in people’s daily lives. Up to December 2012, China’s online shoppers had reached 242 million people; the usage rate of the online shopping had increased to 42.9%. Compared with that in 2011, the number of online shoppers had increased by 48.07 million, with a growth rate of 24.8%. Online retail has become an important channel to promote consumption.The new economic model has brought both opportunities and challenges to the development and research on the law. An increasing number of goods introduced through parallel imports have been appearing in e-commerce retail channels. In particular, some goods of world’s leading brands (luxury goods) have become a sales market that e-commerce businesses are eager to capture. However, would legitimate rights and interests of authorized distributors in the third country be infringed? How can we do to protect interests of consumers? In this paper, basic theories on parallel imports and new challenges the trademark parallel imports are presented with in the e-commerce are analyzed; institutional settings on parallel imports in some developed countries are used for reference to provide some suggestions for the legislation of parallel imports in China.First of all, in this paper, based on basic theories of parallel imports, different legal regulations and practices made by various countries for the parallel imports are analyzed and discussed. Then, a discussion is made on problems parallel import goods may encounter in e-commerce such as responsibilities of internet service providers, the protection of consumer rights and interests, in hope of more clearly understanding advantages and disadvantages of parallel imports and ultimately seeking out legislative rules and approaches for parallel imports which can be used for reference for China.In the first part of this paper, a brief introduction is made of basic definitions and theories of parallel imports including the Exhaustion of Right Doctrine, the Implied License Theory, the Trademark Functionality Doctrine and the Territory Doctrine. Based on research on the mechanism of parallel imports, the generation and historical development of these doctrines and rules are elaborated. In the second part, a comparative analysis is made of laws of regulations of parallel imports in different law tradition countries and regions such as the United States, European Union to figure out changes in attitudes, legislations and policies of different countries on parallel imports. The third part focuses on some special problems trademark parallel imports are presented with in e-commerce. In the fourth part, some personal ideas and suggestions are provided for the legislation of parallel imports in China.