Patent Speculation Trap And Its Legal Regulation

With the increasing competition in technology, patent technology value and economic value are taken seriously by people. The patentee and the related stakeholders tends to use patents as an important tool of market competition. This leads to frequently patent trap phenomenon. Due to different means of implementing and subjective purpose of the patentee and the related people, patent traps also develop into various types. And the diversification of the patent trap has different influence to the society. In these patent traps, some of them are within the limits permitted in the market competition. However, recent years the patent speculation trap frequently occurs. Its purpose is the evolution of profiteering using patents. Compared with other market competition, there are some differences. First of all, it obtain the patent right by buying patent from others in a planned way. Secondly, it seeks unfair interests. As the purpose of patent law is to encourage creativity, it allows a patent holder uses the patent to charge reasonable patent licensing fees or turns the patent into the market for product profit, and using these profits to recover costs or put these into new technology research and development. However, the patent speculation trap uses patent acquisition as a threat to get high patent licensing fees or compensation.In addition, under the background of globalization, the economy of China is rapidly integrate into the world. Although our country’s enterprises realize the importance of patent, the patent layout aspects need to be improved. Due to the patent speculation trap frequently occurring abroad causes the foreign government taking it seriously, especially the legal regulating of the U.S. government. In this case, in addition to that our country enterprises should make strategies to cope with, this type of trap should also be regulated by our country. Therefore, this article wants to solve the problem of our country’s patent legal regulation system on the patent speculation trap.In order to put forward reasonable suggestions of our country legal regulation on the patent speculation trap, the article is divided into four parts which are the concept of the patent speculation trap definition, the legitimacy and the necessity regulation of the patent speculation trap, the United States patent legal regulation on the patent speculation trap and the legal regulation of our country on the patent speculation trap.The first part aims to define the concept of patent the opportunist trap. In order to make a more clear definition, the concept and its social impact of the patent trap phenomenon is needs in the first. Because the patent trap phenomena research is still in the initial stage, and there is no uniform definition. This article defines patent trap phenomenon as two aspects of meanings, one is that it sets by the patentee, and use the exclusive patent legal space for competitors to gain a competitive advantage of the phenomenon; the second one is that it sets by the patentee, and it is the phenomenon of the patentee using patent as the tool of profiteering. Patent trap phenomenon has positive influence and negative influence to society and reflects by the two aspects. But the patent speculation trap has a more negative effect than its positive effects. This paper defines the patent speculation trap as a phenomenon: there is no technology research and development to the patentee, the setters obtain the patents by buying from other patentee and use the patent to get charged high patent licensing fees or high compensation from the infringers.The second part is to explore the legitimacy of the patent speculation trap and the necessity of the regulation problem. Before exploring the two issues, it is necessary to analysis the business model of the patent speculation trap. But the existence of legitimacy does not mean that there is no need for legal regulation. Therefore, at the end of this section, it discusses the legitimacy problem under the condition of existence for the necessity of legal regulation.As the patent trap phenomenon originates from the United States, and in recent years, the United States has many rules for preventing the patent speculation trap problem, it is advantageous for our country. In order to balance the interests of our country, it is better to prevent the negative influence of the opportunist trap threat to our country enterprise patent interests and economic security.The last part of the article illustrates the basis of our country enterprise strategy and some suggestions on the legal regulating. Although the focus of this study is to our country legal regulation on the patent speculation trap, it also needs to put forward some coping strategies of enterprises in our country. This can help our country regulation on the patent speculation trap. Our laws need to reduce the negative influence of the patent speculation trap on our country’s patent. It can not only indirectly promote technology research and development, but also good to standardize the market competition environment.