The protection of intellectual property rights in China is mainly carried out by the special laws of intellectual property rights. The laws involving intellectual property rights, such as Copyright Law, Patent Law and Trademark Law, will make special regulations on the protection of rights and restrict improper behaviors, and provide ways to deal with improper behaviors. Of course, some other economic laws also contain provisions on intellectual property rights, such as the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.
1. The relationship between Anti-Unfair Competition Law and intellectual property law
The Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the intellectual property law are different in terms of legislative purposes. The Anti-Unfair Competition Law is to adjust irregular behaviors in market competition and to solve problems that arise in market competition, thus maintain market competition order, while the intellectual property law is to protect the wealth and interests of knowledge, and make the benefits of intellectual property owners being guaranteed. Protecting intellectual property rights is not the direct purpose of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. It can only play a supplementary role in protecting intellectual property rights.
2. Specific use of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law in the protection of IP rights
In the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, only Articles 6, 8, 9 and 11 directly stipulate unfair competition behaviors that infringe intellectual property rights, mainly including: using without permission a label identical or similar to the name, packaging or decoration, among others, of another person’s commodity with certain influence; using without permission another person’s name with certain influence, such as the name (including abbreviations and trade names) of an enterprise, the name (including abbreviations) of a social organization, or the name (including pseudonyms, stage names and name translations) of an individual; using without permission the principal part of a domain name, the name of a website, or a web page with certain influence, among others, of another person; other acts of confusion sufficient to mislead a person into believing that a commodity is one of another person or has a particular connection with another person; conducting any false or misleading commercial publicity in respect of the performance, functions, quality, sales, user reviews, and honors received of its commodities, in order to defraud or mislead consumers; help another business conduct any false or misleading commercial publicity by organizing false transactions or any other means; committing acts of infringing upon trade secrets; fabricating or disseminating false or misleading information to damage the goodwill or product reputation of a competitor.
As a basic principle in the entire intellectual property law system, the supplementary role played by the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, which is mainly reflected in the following aspects.
First of all, the relationship between the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the specific intellectual property law is the relationship between the general law and the special law. When there are provisions on the same issue, the specific intellectual property law should be applied first. For example, if an act of counterfeiting meets the conditions for trademark infringement stipulated by the Trademark Law, it is unnecessary to invoke the Anti-Unfair Competition Law; if it does not meet the conditions for trademark infringement, the Anti-Unfair Competition Law should be directly applied.
Secondly, the Anti-Unfair Competition Law supplements the deficiencies of specific intellectual property rules. In the case of insufficient specific intellectual property rules, such as when specific intellectual property rules need to be explained, specific intellectual property rules have loopholes, different rules conflict with each other, or in areas that are not covered by specific intellectual property rules, it is possible to apply Anti-Unfair Competition Law. For instance, the provisions on trade secrets in the Anti-Unfair Competition Law have supplemented the lack of protection of trade secrets in intellectual property laws to a certain extent.
The Anti-Unfair Competition Law makes the intellectual property law an open system so that the rights and interests of intellectual property owners are better protected.
2021-04-28
Borsam IP
粤公网安备 44030902003456号
BORSAM IP———————————————