Study On The Application Of The Seller’s Legal Source Defense System In Patent Infringement Disputes

In recent years,patent infringement cases involving the legal source defense of sellers have poured into the courts.Most of these cases are related cases,and the defendants are mainly individually-owned business,individuals,online retailers and other terminal sellers.Based on the consideration of interests,the plaintiff does not sue the distributors or manufacturers as co defendants in the litigation,but intentionally indulges such source infringement,and then launches batch lawsuits against the seller with low litigation ability to make profits in the name of justice.This kind of right protection mode not only makes the judicial organs bear huge trial pressure,but also makes them fall into trial dilemma,such as difficult to balance the interests of both parties,difficult to crack down on the source of patent infringement,difficult to unify the judgment results and so on.In order to guide the obligees to crack down on infringement from the source,the trial judges have actively explored the relevant solutions.Through analysis,the most effective solution is for the court to add the supplier as co defendant directly,so as to attack the infringement from the source,solve the dispute at one time,and realize the balance of interests of both parties.This paper is divided into four parts.The first part is the introduction of this paper,which mainly discusses the background conditions,significance and research methods of this topic,summarizes the existing research,and combs the focus of disputes such as how to identify the subjective and objective elements of the legal source defense,and how to understand the legal consequences,that is,"no liability for compensation".The second part is the legislative status of the seller’s legal source defense system in patent infringement disputes in China,mainly about the legislative process of legal source defense system and the specific provisions of judicial interpretation on the subjective and objective elements of legal source defense.The third part,based on the judicial empirical research,investigates the judicial application of the legal source defense system of the seller in 1680 patent infringement disputes from 2012 to 2019.The results show that the defendants in such cases are mainly individually-owned business,individuals,online retailers and so on,and the success rate of legal source defense of such groups is relatively low.This is not only due to the lack of proof ability of these groups,but also due to the impact of stricter judicial review standards.In addition,the plaintiffs in many cases are the same obliges,most of them file batch lawsuits against the sellers on the ground that the design patent or utility model patent has been infringed.For the obligees,the patent infringement lawsuits against small sellers not only have low risk of losing,high rate of compensation,but also can be based on the scale effect to get excess return.Driven by the interests,the obligees launch large-scale tort lawsuits against such groups,refusing to sue manufacturers or distributors,which makes the court bear huge trial pressure.The fourth part,based on the research of typical judicial judgments,firstly analyzes the trial dilemma faced by the court,and summarizes the solutions adopted by the court.The solutions mainly include:first,exempt the seller from the responsibility for the expenses of the obligee,so as to encourage the obligee to pursue the responsibility from the manufacturer.Secondly,whether the obligee is willing or not,add the supplier as co defendant directly so as to solve the dispute at one time;thirdly,appropriately reduce the high standard requirements of the current trial practice for the seller’s legal source defense,so as to balance the interests between the obligee and the seller.Through the analysis of relevant cases,it is found that the court’s direct addition to the supplier,especially the manufacturer,is not only conducive to the comprehensive settlement of the infringement problem,but also enables the litigants to achieve a balance of interests,improve the accuracy of the judgment decisions,and avoid the conflict of judicial decisions.The fifth part firstly demonstrates the necessity and feasibility of the court’s initiative to add the supplier in the patent infringement cases involving the legal source defense of the seller,then identify the supplier and the seller as the necessary parties to the joint action,so that the court’s addition of the supplier can be supported by the current legislation.On this basis,this paper puts forward the following suggestion:based on the Supreme People’s Court on evidence in civil litigation of intellectual property rights,add the relevant provision of the court on the initiative to add the supplier as a co defendant.In addition,this paper explains the relevant concepts of this provision and makes a preliminary design of the procedure.