The Research Of Intellectual Property Infringement Laches Defense

During 2019,newly-received cases in China People's Court has reached 399 thousand,which can be seen that lawsuits considering intellectual property has become very normal in China.At the same time,there starts to be an increasing number of situation that the accused infringers asserting laches defense when defending.The socalled laches defense refers to the case where the right holder delays to file a lawsuit against the infringement due to his own neglect or due to short of time or other factors.In this case,the accused infringer has the right to take the advantage of the right holder's laches and defend himself of not compensating for the damage to the right holder,if the laches behavior causes substantial damage to the other party.In order to solve the problem of laches defense better,this article first introduces the meaning of laches defense as well as the concepts of implied license,abuse of rights and the harm of laches.Next,it introduces the regulations that confines laches in China and the problems considering the legal regulation of laches in China,which includes the following problems,(1)legal principles cannot be applied to individual cases in China directly;(2)the limitation of litigation is not able to effectively solve the problem of persistent infringement of intellectual property;and(3)there are also some defects in judicial interpretations considering laches.It introduces the American law system of laches defense.On this basis,this paper proposes that the establishment of the laches defense system in intellectual property infringement litigation in China should include unreasonable delay and substantial damage,the consequences of the defense of negligence include the cessation of infringement,damages,etc.In the last part,the author suggests that China should introduce the laches defense of intellectual property right infringement to make up for the limitation of litigation system for the regulation of persistent infringements.