Legal Regulation Of The Parallel Importation Of Trade Liberalization Under Study

Parallel importation is an issue rooting in international trade related with intellectual property (IP). It means that parallel importation concerns with international trade as well as IP protection. With the closer and closer interaction between IP protection and international trade, parallel importation is becoming an important legal issue within the multi-lateral trade system in WTO.Parallel importation causes much concern and dispute in international trade and IP because it is difficult to conciliate the interests of parties concerned in it. Therefore, the international community does not reach an agreement to legally regulating parallel importation. Among all the international conventions or treaties, there is no provision concerning parallel importation, even TRIPs, which is alleged to demonstrate common will of many countries, keeps silent to this issue and it remains the domestic issue of member state. This reflects the complicatedness and difficulty in regulating parallel importation.The characteristic of diversity can be found in the legal regulations of parallel importation in many countries and regions. This demonstrates that different countries lay emphasis on protecting interests of different parties and also reflects that parallel importation is difficult to be regulated by applying single method of legal regulation. In order to effectively regulate parallel importation, different laws shall be applied in combination. As for parallel importation, there appear many good theories and case law rules. Different understanding and application of these theories and rules directly influence defining and judge the commitment of parallel importation. In this paper, the author first analyzes and interprets the definition of parallel importation, its development and categorization, and complicated interest relations. On basis of this analysis, the author mainly deals with the legal regulation of parallel importation in IP law, contract law and competition law, and then propose the ideas of constructing the law system of parallel importation in China by transplanting, in combination with China reality, the legal system of foreign countries.This paper contains six chapters in analyzing different aspects of legal regulation of parallel importation.Chapter One gives definition of parallel importation. The author first introduces the several definitions which are given by scholars in this area and believes that those definitions are not sufficient to cover all the aspects of parallel importation. After analyzing several key terms, the author opines that, as a legal terminology, parallel importation refers to an action that lawful holder of products containing intellectual property imports and sells, through lawful channel but without obtaining the permit of the intellectual property owner, those products in the country in which that said intellectual property is protected. On basis of the above definition, the author also...