Research On Issues Concerning Anti-monopoly Regulations Over Abuse Of Intellectual Property Rights By Multinationals

As we all know, intellectual property has been playing a critical role in thedevelopment of enterprises, growth of national economy and ever the progress inhuman civilization. Thus competition of intellectual property among enterprises hasalways been fierce. Multinational enterprises usually own the intellectual propertyessential in the industry they operate in and also have the dominant position in therelevant market. Or we can say intellectual property is one of the essential elementsfor the multinational enterprise developing into a giant in their industry. For example,the patent, copyright and technologies are very critical for the development ofMicrosoft. It’s also worth noting that enterprises are becoming more interested inM&A, with large groups or super-enterprises forming and emerging, which will helpmultinationals to strengthen its dominant position and capability to control intellectualproperty. In particular, the U.S. government has consented to a series of mega-mergers.Moreover, after the breakout of global financial crisis in2007, multinationals haveattached greater importance to non-equity mode in addition to direct investment andtrade in order to establish or engage in the global value chain. Non-equity mode is, inessence, a form protected by agreement under which intellectual property istransferred to the local non-equity partners. Cases where multinationals abuse their intellectual property rights using theirdominant market position have occurred from time to time. The most famous onewould the one where the Federal Department of Justice and departments of justicefrom20states of the U.S. sued Microsoft. The intangibility of intellectual propertymakes it hard to clearly define what the intellectual property right ought to be and themonopoly of intellectual property rights, to some extent, facilitates the rights owner tobehavior beyond the reasonable line. Multinationals would easily take advantage oftheir dominant market position to chase interests, ignoring the promotion ofinnovation and social development by intellectual property system. Abused rightscannot be guarantee of promoting social welfare or even become means to restrictreasonable competition and enhance monopoly. Therefore, it is time to implement thedifficult and essential task of probing into the antimonopoly rules regulating the abuseof intellectual property rights.The first part of this thesis will discuss the current status of and the theoreticalbasis for antimonopoly regulation over the abuse of intellectual property rights bymultinationals. The second and third part will discuss the antimonopoly rules andpractice on the abuse of intellectual property rights by multinationals in the U.S. andEuropean Union respectively. The forth part will discuss the internationalantimonopoly rules for regulating the abuse of intellectual property rights bymultinationals. The final part will focus on the antimonopoly rules and practice on theabuse of intellectual property rights by multinationals in China and some suggestionsfor improving the antimonopoly rules and domestic enterprises coping with the abuseof intellectual property rights by multinationals will be proposed in this part.