Research On The Legal Issues In Chain Operation

Since its initial emergence in the United States, chain business has achieved significant progress in a short period of time in more and more countries world widely, exhibiting a strong vitality, thanks to its large-scale, low-cost, intelligent way of business expansion. As a result, Naisbitt, a Western economist, considers chain store operation as"the most dynamic mode of business operation in the 20th century."After the mode chain business entered into China in the middle of the 1980s, it started a swift and violent development and brought a profound revolution in business field, eventually, it has become a dominant type of retail trade in China due to its unsurpassable advantages. However, as an advanced business model, it has been researched by scholars in China basically from economics and management with rare studies done from the perspective of law. Therefore, it is both realistic and urgent for us to do research in the theory of chain store operation in the legal aspect.This thesis is constituted of four parts, totally about thirty six thousand words. Based on the works of many pioneering researchers, the author of this thesis endeavors to make a discussion in respect to the overview of chain business in Chinese commerce, the analysis of the legal relationship of chain business, special legal issues and the legislation of chain operation. In the overview part, the author begins from the analysis on the concept of chain business, focusing on its types characteristics and seizing their essence, and generalizes the lawful characteristics of chain business in the final. In the second part, the author gets help from the basic legal relationship of franchise operation to summarize that of chain business and puts forward a creative concept of the right of chain operation. Moreover, the author improves the basic theory of law in chain business after the analysis in its contracts. The third part is concerned with some special lawful issues in chain business, in which the author seizes three most intense ones: intellectual property rights, restrictive competition and the issue of sharing responsibility, to carry out his theoretical analysis.In the last part, the author states from domestic legislation, industry self-regulatory norms, as well as international (including regional) norms to conduct analysis of the rule of law in the countries and regions where chain business is more developed. By other's faults, wise men correct their own. Among them, the United States and the European Union have had developed in a long history, encountered more problems, accumulated abundant experience and had relatively sound legal systems with their respective unique features. Although chain operation is showing a rapid development momentum in China, there is also a need for special legislation to regulate the operational behavior of chain business with its development. In this regard, the experience gained from developed countries is worthy of our consideration.