Research On The Legal Source Defense System In Intellectual Property Infringement

In recent years,China has continuously strengthened the protection of intellectual property rights,and the awareness of rights holders has continuously increased.At the same time,the number of intellectual property infringement lawsuits is also increasing.A complete product transaction must undergo a process from the rights holder to the manufacturer,to the seller,and finally to the buyer.However,in market transactions,the infringements of producers are often hidden,making it difficult for intellectual property owners to directly safeguard their rights through producers.Therefore,intellectual property owners tend to sue sellers at the back end of the transaction chain that are easily discovered,thereby achieving the purpose of safeguarding their rights.At this time,most infringers facing infringement lawsuits will assert that the infringing product has a legitimate source,but in judicial practice,the success rate of the infringer’s defense is often low.The current intellectual property law and related judicial interpretations do not provide uniform provisions for the legal source defense system,which allows the court to have greater discretion and is prone to the phenomenon of different judgments in the same case.Therefore,it is of important theoretical and practical significance to analyze the problems existing in the legal provisions of the legal source defense system and the current situation of the application of the law.This article has analyzed a large number of cases in judicial practice,and found that the current low success rate of legitimate source defense in China is mainly due to the low evidentiary ability of most infringers and high court review standards.In addition,combining the provisions of legal texts and judicial application,it is found that there are the following problems in China’s legitimate source defense system: First,in terms of constitutive requirements,the scope of eligible subjects is small,There is a lack of unified identification standards for the subjective and objective requirements;Secondly,the specific liability provisions after the establishment of the legitimate source defense are not clear enough,and it is unclear whether the legal source defense in the copyright field can be exempted from liability after its establishment,and there is no provision on whether it is necessary to bear reasonable expenses and return infringing profits;Third,there is no provision as to whether additional product providers can participate in litigation.In response to the above issues,and in combination with our current judicial practice experience,this article proposes the following suggestions for improvement: First,unify the constituent elements of legitimate source defenses,appropriately expand the scope of the subject,clarify that the subjective element is "unknown",the objective element is "legitimate source",and the supplementary element is "explanation of the provider’s information",and allocate the burden of proof for the subjective element to the infringer,so as to unify the general identification criteria for the subjective and objective elements,However,it is clear that it can be determined by the court according to the actual situation of the defendant;Secondly,refine the issue of liability bearing after the establishment of the legitimate source defense,and clarify that the establishment of the legitimate source defense in the copyright field can exempt the liability for damages.The infringer should bear reasonable expenses for safeguarding rights and clarify the specific costs,and clarify that there is no need to return infringing profits;Finally,referring to the theory of similar necessary joint litigation,it is clear that if the defendant has preliminary evidence to prove the source of the infringing product,additional product providers can participate in the litigation,in order to clarify the facts of the case and trace the source of the infringement.