Non-infringement of intellectual property rights litigation is a new type of litigation in China. Like other new things, people need a process to know it. On July 12, 2002, the Reply on the Dispute between Suzhou Longbao Bio-engineering Industrial Company and Suzhou Langlifu Company made by the Third Court of the Supreme People's Court Civil Trial was considered as the earliest legal basis of intellectual property non-infringement litigation in China. However, the reply did not clearly point out the purpose of the design of the non-infringement litigation system, which also led to differences in the handling of such cases by the courts later. In the Provisions on Civil Cause of Action, which came into effect on April 1 2008, case 152 was confirmed as a non-infringement dispute. The Supreme Court defined this kind of dispute as "an action in which an actor whose interests are affected by a specific intellectual property right takes the intellectual property right as the defendant and requests to confirm that his actions do not infringe intellectual property rights." At this point, the dispute of confirming non-infringement was officially recognized as a third-level cause of action by the Supreme People's Court. [2]
Internationally, the action of confirming the non-infringement of intellectual property rights is a common means to deal with arbitrary infringement complaints, and it is also a favorable weapon for the recipients of infringement warning letters to take the initiative to fight back. Developed countries have enacted various intellectual property laws to protect the intellectual property rights of their own enterprises in an attempt to monopolize the market, curb the development of developing countries and gain benefits from them. At the same time, the economic development of developing countries is struggling. In real life, obligees often issue infringement warning letters for the purpose of fabricating and spreading false facts, damaging competitors' business reputation and commodity reputation, and engaging in unfair competition. How should enterprises in developing countries respond? Many times, enterprises just want to sue unfair competition, and unfair competition needs to fabricate and spread false facts based on subjective intention and behavior, which will damage the business reputation of competitors. Most infringement warning letters in real life do not meet this condition. At this time, the lawsuit of non-infringement of intellectual property rights is an important means to prevent the obligee from abusing intellectual property rights.
Intellectual property non-infringement litigation is closely related to many other laws and regulations besides intellectual property law. Enterprises use intellectual property rights to monopolize the market, which is related to the anti-monopoly law. In order to prevent other enterprises from seizing the market, issuing infringement warning letters at will, damaging competitors' business reputation and commodity reputation, and engaging in unfair competition, it is related to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. Enterprises discharge pollutants at will for the benefit, which is related to environmental protection law; Being unkind to workers is related to the labor law. Sometimes transnational litigation is needed, which is related to international law and international treaties.
[1] Zhang Weiping: litigation structure and procedure-legal analysis of civil litigation [M], Tsinghua University Publishing House, 2000,242.
[2] Zhang Yumin editor: "Intellectual Property and Market Competition" [M], Law Press, 2005.