E-commerce and Intellectual Property Protection

Abstract: In the era of knowledge economy, due to the widespread application of computer network technology and digital technology, people’s intelligence and the high-speed operation capabilities of computers have converged and Integration creates new social productivity; enriches a large number of activities such as e-commerce, and meets people's various needs for social interaction, shopping, learning, consumption, and medical care. E-commerce activities are to make the circulation of some commodities “invisible” in the network environment. Business activities such as negotiating, signing contracts, ordering goods, and ultimately obtaining goods on computer networks have created new problems in the protection of intellectual property rights. Because of this, e-commerce issues have attracted WIPO's great attention.

Keywords: e-commerce, digital products, intellectual property, infringement, legal protection

E-commerce relies on a new computer and electronic data communication method, the Internet, and Internet technology provides copyright protection The objects of protection and the connotation of copyright rights pose new challenges, and also bring new issues to the identification of copyright infringement: intellectual property exclusivity and international "integration", copyright law and online copyright protection, domain name registration and trademark rights conflicts, legal issues in e-commerce, copyright law and "right of reproduction" restrictions.

Intellectual property exclusivity and international “integration”. The arrival of the era of knowledge economy has caused the protection of intellectual property rights to face new problems, and these problems mainly focus on the application of computer networks. It is precisely because of the rapid development of computer networks that the demand for data information sharing has arisen, which has strongly conflicted with the characteristics of intellectual property. One of the most prominent features of intellectual property is its “exclusiveness”; while information on the Internet that should be protected by intellectual property is open and public, and is difficult to control by the right holder. "Regionality" is another characteristic of intellectual property rights, while the characteristic of network transmission is "borderless".

Currently, in order to resolve these conflicts, most countries in the world advocate further strengthening the “exclusiveness” protection of intellectual property rights through the conclusion of international conventions. In December 1996 in Geneva, the "World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty" and the "World Intellectual Property Organization Performances and Phonograms Treaty" concluded under the auspices of WIPO added new rights to copyright protection for the network environment, and at the same time expanded existing copyright protection rights. The extension of rights to digital applications is explained. In terms of trademark protection, most countries have adopted the method of separating well-known trademarks from goods and services and providing special protection to adapt to the trend of strengthening trademark exclusivity. In practice, infringement on the Internet often occurs when infringing copies are online, and any location in the world may become the place where infringement occurs; therefore, it is impossible to limit the borderless nature of network transmission. In fact, most countries and regions are reducing the regional nature of intellectual property rights and accelerating the process of international “integration” of national intellectual property laws to resolve this contradiction. However, the international “integration” of intellectual property laws requires a unified standard. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) established by the World Trade Organization is an example. In the knowledge economy, the trend of strengthening the exclusivity of intellectual property rights and the international "integration" of international intellectual property laws is an unstoppable trend; this is a major challenge to developing countries in the world. As a major developing country, China must study its own countermeasures. We must promptly improve and improve the legal protection system for intellectual property rights and strive to adapt to the process of internationalization of intellectual property protection so as to ensure that the Chinese nation remains invincible in the new century in international competition.

Copyright law and online copyright protection. The most involved issues in e-commerce activities are intellectual property issues.

In e-commerce transmitted over the Internet, the invisible sales of copyrighted products have been involved, resulting in new issues of copyright protection; in particular, the protection of trademarks and their commercial logos, goodwill protection, and commercialized image protection on the Internet have arisen. New issues that are fundamentally different from traditional conservation. Therefore, e-commerce has had a great impact on my country's copyright law and trademark law in the network environment.

In my country’s copyright law, there are no corresponding legal provisions for the digitization of works and the online dissemination of works. This situation has changed the subject and object of works in the network environment. It is difficult to identify the copyright owner of open works, and the existence of information network works, multimedia works and derivative works generated by tools makes the classification of works difficult. This affects the identification of subject qualifications in e-commerce activities. Secondly, publishing and dissemination activities have been expanded. In the network environment, the link of publishing in the traditional sense does not exist. The role is played by information content providers, network service providers, and merchants engaged in e-commerce activities. Due to the uncertainty of the publishing region, it brings difficulties to determine the region. ; Therefore, it is necessary to study the rights and obligations of network communication service providers and information content providers as well as e-commerce merchants. Third, it is difficult to define the boundaries of personal fair use of works. Especially in the Internet environment, the separation of economic benefit acquisition and work form makes it difficult to draw a clear line between profit and non-profit. Fourth, the protection of users’ legal rights is affected. In the Internet environment, there are conditions and environments where users can passively obtain works, which is very likely to infringe on users' legitimate rights. Therefore, in order to protect the interests of copyright holders of all parties and promote the development of e-commerce, the protection principles and priorities of my country’s copyright law should be adjusted; and with the advancement of computer network technology and applications, the intensity of adjustment will continue to increase.

Conflict between domain name registration and trademark rights. my country’s trademark law only stipulates that protectable marks are “words, patterns or combinations thereof”, but does not protect a certain dynamic process that appears online as a trademark. Commercial activities in the Internet environment have made people feel that using "visual perceptibility" to identify trademarks is more suitable for the development of commercial activities than using "words and patterns" to identify trademarks. The most prominent problem currently in our country is the conflict between “domain name registration” and trademark rights in the Internet environment. Although the State Council issued the "Interim Regulations on Internet Domain Name Registration in China" in May 1997, it only stipulates that "you are not allowed to use registered trademarks that do not belong to you to apply for domain name registration"; it does not prohibit using other people's trademarks and trade names to grab domain names. Note the domain name. Therefore, the "domain name" has actually become a protected part of the goodwill and even the trade name, and is traded as an intangible asset. Some current international treaties only stipulate that the owners of "internationally renowned trademarks" have the right to prohibit others from preemptively registering domain names with their own trademarks; one of the focal points of the conflict between non-well-known trademarks and trade names and "domain names" is that The procedure for generating rights. This is because trademark rights are mostly generated through official administrative approval and registration; trade name rights are generated based on actual use; and domain name exclusive rights are mostly generated through registration by unofficial organizations. Since there is still no technical way to resolve the conflict, the real solution to the conflict between “domain name” and prior trademark rights and prior trade name rights will have to wait until the next century to be studied and resolved.

Legal issues in e-commerce. As a new business operation model, e-commerce will become the mainstream of international business transactions in the 21st century. With the rapid development of the internationalization of intellectual property protection, countries around the world are paying more and more attention to the resolution of legal issues in the e-commerce environment. The first is to resolve the issue of legal status online. The electronic contracts signed by the parties to the transaction in e-commerce must have legal effect, so that the parties to the contract are bound by the law and their interests are protected.

Therefore, during the implementation of my country's Contract Law, attention should be paid to the research on legal disputes that arise in the signing of electronic contracts, performance of commitments, changes and transfers, termination, breach of contract, etc., in order to facilitate legal practice after a period of legal practice. Improve, revise and supplement it to make the electronic contract more legally effective. Secondly, we need to invest a lot of money and concentrate on revising my country's existing intellectual property laws, especially the revision of copyright law and trademark law.

Copyright law and "right of reproduction" restrictions. Since digitized works have characteristics such as "reproducibility" and "originality", the digitization of existing works should be an exclusive right of the copyright owner and should be protected by copyright law. Digitizing a work is itself an act of “copying” and should be subject to the “right of reproduction”. Therefore, item (1) of the property rights in Article 10 of the Amendment to the Copyright Law (Draft) should be revised to: "The right to reproduce, that is, the right to print, copy, copy, rub, record, video, rip, and remake The right to make one or more copies of the work by digital or non-digital means such as conversion."

The online dissemination of works is neither entirely the distribution of works nor the playback of works. It is a brand new way of dissemination of works. Therefore, from the perspective of protecting the interests of the copyright owner, uploading a work to the Internet and sending it to the public is the use of the work. It is an exclusive right of the copyright owner and should be protected by copyright law. Since my country's protection of tangible knowledge products is insufficient, the intellectual property protection for digital product e-commerce is even more lacking. This is very unfavorable to the development of e-commerce in our country. Therefore, if my country wants to develop digital product e-commerce, it must solve two problems: first, what products can be digitized and suitable for full digital e-commerce; second, how to protect these digital products and prevent "free riding" behavior. The intellectual property system provides the best solution to solve these two problems. In the digital product e-commerce environment, intellectual property rights and e-commerce are more closely linked, and there is an interactive relationship between the two. The intangibility of intellectual property rights enables knowledge products with intellectual property rights to be transformed into digital products as quickly as possible. The non-destructibility and replicability of digital products make the development of digital product e-commerce inseparable from the protection of intellectual property rights. Our country should create an environment to promote the development of e-commerce as soon as possible. On the one hand, it is the economic environment, which should promote the transformation of knowledge products into digital products as soon as possible, so that e-commerce has more tradable products; on the other hand, it is the intellectual property legal environment, which should establish a complete intellectual property system to protect digital products.