The principle of exhaustion of rights is as follows:
The so-called exhaustion of rights, also known as the principle of exhaustion of rights and the first sale principle, is a type of restriction on exclusive rights in intellectual property rights. A typical system refers to an intellectual property product manufactured by the owner of the intellectual property or someone authorized by him. After it is put on the market for the first time, the right holder loses further control over it within a certain geographical scope. The right holder The rights are deemed to be exhausted and exhausted.
The principle of exhaustion of rights has different contents in copyright law, trademark law and patent law, but it has a certain consistency. To sum up, there are the following points:
1. The specificity of exhaustive rights
The "exhaustion of rights" of intellectual property rights refers to the exhaustion of specific rights, not to ownership items of exhaustion. What is exhausted first is not personal rights, but property rights; secondly, what is exhausted is not copyright property rights, patent rights or trademark rights themselves, but their sub-items, that is, a specific right in the group of rights related to the sale or use of products. And the rights that are exhausted are specific rights related to the circulation of goods and the use of buyers that are clearly stipulated by law.
2. The specificity of the object of exhaustion
The so-called specificity of the object of exhaustion means that the exhaustion of rights is for each specific product legally put into the market, rather than Applicable to all products of the same category or series, it will not cause the suspension of the validity of the intellectual property itself. The rights holder still has exclusive and absolute rights to its products that have not yet been put on the market or have been illegally put on the market, and no one is still allowed to copy intellectual products without permission.
3. Specificity of the scope of exhaustion
The exhaustion of intellectual property rights has regional characteristics. Generally speaking, the right holder’s release of its intellectual property products in a country will not cause Rights to its products in other countries are exhausted. Therefore, the right holder still has the right to prohibit others from importing the products for which it has intellectual property rights without permission. It can be seen from the above characteristics that the principle of exhaustion of rights is undoubtedly a huge restriction on the exclusivity of intellectual property rights.