Study Of The Inducement Infringement Of The Process Patent Based On The Internet

Since the beginning of 21 st century, with the rapid development of the Internet, more and more infringement cases involving process patent were happened in this field. Such process patent is different from traditional manufacturing process or product patents, combined with the characteristics of the Internet itself, and might be carried out by multiple actors. The rule of direct and inducement of patent infringement could not regulatory such acts under the patent law system in US. There are no explicit legal provisions of inducement of patent infringement in our country yet, in such condition, I attempt to deeply study the induce infringement of patent law, in order to offer a few reasonable advice to the building of inducement of process patent infringement on the internet in our country by analyzing the U.S. legislation and judicial precedents on Inducement of process patent infringement.This paper first introduces the concept of patent inducement infringement and the role it plays in the system of patent indirect infringement. Since there is no direct infringer, it is barely to pursue tort liability of inducement actors by using the traditional tort theory of patent inducement to solve practical objective infringement cases of the Internet process patent, which contains unique characteristics of the Internet and method patents. And the next part follows the timeline, systematically introduces the relevant cases of the U.S. court, analyzes their verdicts and reasons, teases out the relevant policy considerations, and summarizes the values in dealing with such cases. Through the above analysis, the last part points out that the shortcomings by using the rule of direct patent infringement and the theory of common tort of civil law to deal with such acts in our country, then from the angle of process patent on the Internet, offers a proposal of institutional design of inducement infringement of process patent in our country in the future. The system of patent indirect infringement extends the protection scope of patentee, it imposes the public the restriction on the access of advanced science and technology as well. Therefore, we should learn from other countries’ legislation model, focus on the interests of balance, and based on current scientific and technological development and economic status.