The "notice-delete" system originated from the Millennium Digital Copyright Act of the United States, aiming at striking a balance between the development of the Internet industry and the protection of copyright owners' rights and interests. Specific types of Internet service providers will take necessary measures such as deleting and blocking the suspected infringing content notified by the right holders, so as to solve the online copyright disputes quickly and efficiently.
In 2006, China formally introduced this system in the Regulations on the Protection of the Right of Information Network Communication. Later, it was made clear in a series of laws and regulations, such as the Tort Liability Law and the E-commerce Law under consideration, that Internet service providers should bear the responsibility of resolving disputes between the parties under certain circumstances. However, in practice, the disputes between the parties in the Internet field have gone beyond the setting of "simple disputes" at the beginning of the establishment of the "notification-deletion" system.
Taking the patent disputes encountered in the daily practice of e-commerce third-party platforms as an example, the patentee asked the third-party platforms to delete the related goods on the grounds that the goods sold by the merchants in the platform infringed their copyright. However, because judging patent infringement requires strong professionalism, it is difficult for the platform to confirm that the goods sold by merchants are likely to constitute infringement, but if they are not deleted, they will face the legal risk that the patentee will demand joint liability.
The "chilling effect" came into being. The platform can directly delete goods to protect its own interests, but the consequences of deleting them by mistake are borne by the merchants themselves. The high cost of safeguarding rights makes businesses discouraged, and it is difficult to achieve the "fairness and justice" that dispute resolution should have.
In order to solve the problem that Internet service providers are not capable of dealing with complex disputes, it is necessary for Internet courts to provide new ideas for solving disputes quickly and efficiently, and introduce a new mechanism for quickly and efficiently confirming disputes and their merits. Internet service providers can use the efficient operation of the "notification-deletion" mechanism to solve disputes.