Study On The Injunctive Relief Of Standard-Essential Patents

In recent years,whether it is the "paper dispute" in theory or the "war of confrontation" in juridical practice,the discussion on the injunctive relief of standard-essential patents is endless.With the gradually increasing disputes,the escalation of conflicts and the continuous fermentation of debates,the application and regulation of the injunctive relief related to standard-essential patents need to be solved urgently.Generally speaking,the terms of patent license contract are determined by the parties through consultation.Besides the liability for contracting fault in signing the contract,the two parties usually do not have other legal liabilities before signing the contract.The combination of technical standards and patents brings the standard-essential patents,and creates the FRAND principle which restricted them.How to coordinate the relationship among the protection of standard-essential patents,the restriction of FRAND principle and the application of the injunctive relief system is very significant.The development of the interlocking system makes the legal relationship of patent license contracts,which originally centered on autonomy of will,very complicated.One of the fundamental reasons is that the patent is labeled with technical standards,which makes the equal status of the patent owner and potential licensee beginning to imbalance in negotiation.So the question becoming complicated is inevitable if we want to find a balance point on the basis of imbalance.In order to achieve the essential purpose of standard-setting and the patent legal system,even if faced with more complex problems,we should accept difficulties,explain the connotation and extension of the law,make up for the legal gap,and solve the difficult problems of juridical practice.The injunctive relief is the core issue in the field of standard-essential patents,and the key is to clarify whether or not the standard-essential patents can apply injunction relief and how to restrict its application,which is controversial in the theoretical and practical circles of various countries.In the dispute,the theory of restriction of application prevails because of the particularity of standard-essential patents and the role of injunctive relief in patent protection which provide strong support for the application of injunction.At the same time,FRAND principle comes into being for standard-essential patents,and the identification of relevant issues in the application of law will have a certain impact on the application of prohibition.It is noteworthy that the FRAND commitments made by the patentee does not mean the abandonment of the right to apply for the prohibition,and they are different.Although the application of injunctive relief in standard-essential patents disputes is worthy of affirmation,it is not arbitrary and also should be imposed reasonable restrictions to avoid the occurrence of patent hijacking.On the one hand,in order to clarify the necessary conditions for the application of the injunctive relief on standard-essential patents we should judge the subjective factors of the patentee and the standard implementer from the positive application conditions.In addition,we should integrate the FRAND principle for patent licensing conditions and consider of public interests into the application conditions.On the other hand,we should regulate the abuse of the injunctive relief from the opposite side.We need to establish the anti-monopoly regulatory position of the abuse of injunctive relief in our country,and clarify the relevant factors that constitute abuse of dominant market position by applying injunctive relief.We will analyze the difficulties of the application of injunctive relief for standardessential patents from the perspectives of theory and practice,foreign and domestic.