Anti-unfair competition law and intellectual property law are two important legal systems, and it is of great theoretical and practical significance to correctly understand and handle the relationship between them. Here, the author tries to put forward his own humble opinion and pass it on to law colleagues.
The so-called anti-unfair competition law refers to the sum of legal norms to maintain economic order by stopping unfair competition in market transactions. Anti-unfair competition law originated from tort law in civil law. The difference between the two is that civil law focuses on the balance of personal interests, and its tort liability is based on actual damage; Anti-unfair competition law not only protects individual competitors, but also directly protects public interests. In addition, the application of the anti-unfair competition law is conditional on the competitive relationship, but the damage to individual rights and interests is not a necessary factor. With the passage of time, the anti-unfair competition law has increasingly strengthened the protection of public interests and gradually transformed into a market behavior control law.
The object of anti-unfair competition law protection is the legitimate interests of all parties in the market competition;
(1) the interests of competitors. Reflected in the protection of competitors' labor achievements and freedom of activities. The so-called labor achievements include competitors' goodwill, trademarks, business experience, business secrets and other unique achievements. Freedom of activity refers to ensuring that competitors have the freedom to show their business skills.
(2) public interest. Protect competitors' normal operation ability, provide genuine services and commodities for the society, and ensure the overall social order.
(3) consumer interests. As an important participant in the market, consumers' interests have also become the direct object of the anti-unfair competition law.
In a word, anti-unfair competition law is an independent legal department. It is worth noting that, if understood in a broad sense, it can be said that both the Trademark Law and the Trade Secrets Law are components of the anti-unfair competition law, and even the Patent Law and the Copyright Law have provisions to directly stop unfair competition. Intellectual property protection itself has a positive effect on stopping unfair competition, which is just an example of cooperation among all legal systems.
Intellectual property rights are people's rights to their intellectual achievements and other related scientific, technological, cultural, industrial and commercial achievements according to law. The object of intellectual property rights is mainly intellectual achievements, but not limited to intellectual achievements, such as trademarks protected by industrial property rights and objects of neighboring rights in copyright. They are not, or at least not, intellectual achievements, but the direct result of enterprise management, machine production or investment behavior. Protecting them is not to encourage intellectual creation, but to protect the income from investment or labor input. Therefore, to sum up, the object of intellectual property rights is intellectual achievements and other related industrial and commercial achievements, which can be referred to as intellectual achievements and related achievements.
Intellectual property rights are generally divided into two parts, namely copyright and industrial property rights. Among them, the object of the former is literature, art and scientific works, and its subject is cultural creators, while the object of the latter is technological inventions and achievements in the commercial field, and its subject is technical creators and commercial operators. However, with the continuous emergence of new technologies, more and more new objects, such as computer programs and electronic databases, have been brought into the scope of copyright protection, thus diluting the color of copyright as a cultural property right, and the boundary between copyright and industrial property right is increasingly blurred.
Theoretically, intellectual property has the following attributes: First, intellectual property is a kind of private right, which is a right about private interests determined by private law. Secondly, intellectual property is quasi-real right, that is, the right holder's control over a specific object. This specific object is intellectual achievements and related achievements, which are intangible, but can also be specified, valuable to human beings and can be dominated by human beings, so they belong to things in a broad sense, and the general principles of property rights also apply to intellectual property rights. However, due to the intangibility of its object, intellectual property rights have some particularities, such as regionality and timeliness. Third, intellectual property rights are the unity of property rights and personal rights. This dual attribute is particularly reflected in copyright. On the one hand, it gives the author the right of reproduction, distribution, adaptation and other property rights, on the other hand, it gives the author the right of publication, the right of signature and other personal rights. Finally, intellectual property is an absolute right, which means that the obligee enjoys positive power and negative power. The former means that the right holder has the right to use his intellectual achievements and related achievements, while the latter means that the right holder has the right to prohibit others from using his intellectual achievements and related achievements.
Intellectual property law is the sum total of legal norms regulating the property relations and personal relations arising from the above intellectual achievements and related achievements. China's legal circles usually regard it as a part of civil law, and the General Principles of Civil Law formulated by 1986 has made special provisions on it. However, the industrial property law in intellectual property law is often regarded as an integral part of economic law. Nevertheless, intellectual property law is relatively independent, and its laws are mainly civil substantive laws, including administrative law, procedural law and even criminal law.