(a) The positive impact of intellectual property rights on international trade
First of all, having more high-quality intellectual property rights will improve the competitiveness of the country. Judging from the current international form, trade exports are increasingly dependent on intellectual property rights. Because countries have different intellectual property rights, a country can implement intellectual property protection according to its own advantages, so as to give full play to the advantages of certain technologies and products in international trade. At the same time, it can also force other countries to strengthen intellectual property protection, which can bring them competitive advantages, and in this process, the technological advantages of enterprises can be transformed into market advantages and industrial advantages. Therefore, when a country has a large number of high-quality intellectual property rights, it has strong market competitiveness to a certain extent, thus improving the international competitiveness of its products and ultimately enhancing a country's comprehensive national strength through the transmission mechanism of the industrial chain.
Second, owning intellectual property rights has expanded the scope of world trade. As far as we know, the behaviors related to intellectual property not only permeate the trade of goods and services, but also gradually become an independent trade form. The protection of intellectual property rights is directly related to the trade related to intellectual property rights, especially the technology trade. A perfect intellectual property system can protect the rights of patent technology owners, increase the degree of protection of patent technology owners for their new products, and curb the imitation and forgery of their new products by other enterprises in a certain period of time, thus intensifying the expansion of the market scale of enterprise products, increasing the trade related to intellectual property rights and expanding the scope of world trade.
Third, owning intellectual property rights can bring huge economic and trade benefits. Multinational companies in developed countries transfer the assembly of products to developing China countries in order to make use of the cheap labor in these developing countries and make the cheap labor in developing countries become the manufacturers of their products. By developing our country's core technology and owning our own intellectual property rights, we can use intellectual property rights to have a monopoly advantage-this can not only reduce the production cost of products, but also use the monopoly advantage of new products to expand the market share of products in developing countries, thus gaining huge economic and trade benefits.
(B) the negative impact of intellectual property rights on international trade
First of all, excessive intellectual property protection hinders economic growth and technological innovation. Intellectual property system is generally regarded as the driving force to promote economic growth and technological innovation. But the fundamental driving force of innovation comes from competition, and intellectual property protection is essentially monopoly. Monopoly can provide incentives for innovators, but it can also encourage former innovators to rely on monopoly to obtain high profits, thus weakening the driving force of technological innovation. The greater the protection of intellectual property rights, the higher the monopoly income of the former innovators and the weaker the motivation for further innovation. The final result of this continuous development is that excessive protection of intellectual property rights will hinder economic growth and dampen the enthusiasm of enterprises for technological innovation.
Second, there is a problem of interest transfer in the implementation of intellectual property protection. The main owner of intellectual property rights is modern industry, and one of the characteristics of modern industry is that the sales market of most enterprises spans multiple administrative regions, which leads to the fact that the beneficiaries and costs in the implementation of intellectual property system are not completely coincident. The beneficiary is the enterprise, and the government of the place of sale needs to bear higher execution cost. The tax revenue increased by the beneficiary enterprise may not be obtained by the government of the place of sale that pays the execution cost, thus causing the problem of interest transmission. Some kind of transfer payment mechanism between regions in China can partially solve the above problems, but there is no such mechanism in the world. As we all know, in China, we advocate strict protection of intellectual property rights, from which western multinational companies benefit the most. These multinational companies enjoy higher tax treatment than domestic enterprises, and their tax evasion scale is also considerable; If there is no corresponding supporting measures, simply strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights that is beneficial to oneself will inevitably lead to the transfer of interests that is beneficial to the home country of multinational corporations to a certain extent.
Third, excessive intellectual property protection will lead to trade disputes. Linking intellectual property rights with international trade is a new international trend, which makes intellectual property protection one of the important trade protection means for member countries to participate in international competition. Due to the rationality, complexity, concealment and legitimacy of the trade barriers formed by intellectual property rights, many countries, especially developed countries, have established their own trade technical barriers system by using patents and standards through their own advantages in technology and intellectual property rights. Coupled with their emphasis on intellectual property rights and clever use in the trade field, non-intellectual property owners in other countries are in a very unfavorable position. Faced with the difficulties of patent application being blocked, products being sued for infringement and products being prevented from entering the market by patents, as we can see now, intellectual property protection has become one of the main forms of non-tariff barriers.
Second, the current situation of intellectual property protection in China
(1) Progress made in intellectual property protection in China.
China's intellectual property protection system started late in China, and it didn't come into being and develop until the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, China's intellectual property protection system has gone through the course of hundreds of years in other countries in just over twenty years.
First, the legislative system of intellectual property protection. The legal framework of intellectual property protection in China was basically established more than 20 years ago. Up to now, a legal system has been formed with patent law, trademark law and copyright law as the main body, supplemented by various protection regulations such as regulations on the protection of new varieties of plants, regulations on the protection of layout of integrated circuits and regulations on the customs protection of intellectual property rights (revised draft). The achievements of intellectual property legislation in China are also reflected in the special provisions on intellectual property protection in civil law and criminal law, and the newly revised foreign trade law has a special chapter on intellectual property protection.
Second, the judicial practice of intellectual property protection. Intellectual property protection in China began to pay equal attention to administrative protection and judicial protection. Relevant laws, regulations and administrative rules were finally implemented by the people's courts, and law enforcement was strengthened. At the same time, enterprises have also begun to realize the importance of intellectual property protection, and improved their own prevention ability and protection awareness.
(B) Problems in the protection of intellectual property rights in China
Undoubtedly, compared with other developed countries and even some developing countries, there is still a huge gap in intellectual property protection in China. Developed countries use a large number of patents and other intellectual property rights to occupy China's domestic market and control China's overseas investment and export expansion, which poses a serious threat to China's economic development.
First of all, China lacks an overall strategy to protect intellectual property rights. Intellectual property system is a basic legal system to protect intellectual labor achievements, and it is also one of the important incentive mechanisms to promote technological innovation, accelerate the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements, and enhance economic and technological competitiveness. In today's world, the competition of comprehensive national strength is dominant. As one of the important legal mechanisms to stimulate innovation, promote scientific and technological progress, optimize the allocation of scientific and technological resources and maintain market competition order, intellectual property system is playing an increasingly prominent role. For a long time, due to the lack of an overall strategy for the protection of intellectual property rights in China, the position and role of intellectual property rights in economy and foreign trade have not been fully exerted, thus affecting the healthy development of foreign trade.
Second, the independent innovation and R&D investment capacity of the state and enterprises are not enough. R&D activities are the source and foundation for a country, region and enterprise to acquire and own intellectual property rights. However, due to the insufficient investment in science and technology by the state and enterprises and the low expenditure on R&D, the ability of China enterprises to absorb and digest new technologies, especially the ability to independently develop new technologies, is generally low. Many enterprises take the road of "bringing in-lagging behind-reintroducing-lagging behind", which makes it difficult for China to upgrade its industrial structure and foreign trade structure quickly, so it is always in a very passive position.
Third, the awareness of intellectual property protection in Chinese enterprises is weak. At present, the awareness of intellectual property protection of many enterprises in China is still not strong, and they can't convert their R&D achievements into intellectual property rights in time, especially the awareness of applying for intellectual property rights abroad is seriously insufficient, which leads to many scientific research achievements not being protected by relevant laws and regulations of relevant countries and regions, and even some state-owned brands are maliciously registered in many places abroad; Even if some enterprises have their own intellectual property rights, when their legitimate rights and interests are infringed, they can't use legal weapons to defend their legitimate rights and interests in time, leading to failure.
Fourthly, China's intellectual property legislation is inconsistent with the international intellectual property system. Although the establishment of China's legislative system is much shorter than that of developed countries, there is no anti-monopoly law in China's legislative system, and the anti-unfair competition law, which complements anti-monopoly, only focuses on the protection of intellectual property rights, without establishing legislative ideas to restrict intellectual property rights. So far, China's existing laws and regulations can be applied to the monopolistic behavior of patent rights to varying degrees, but they mainly focus on adjusting the licensing behavior of patent rights, and there is no clear regulation to effectively restrain other abuses of patent rights, and the scope of adjustment is not complete enough. At the same time, China has not established a complete standard system. Compared with other developed countries, there is a big gap in China's participation in international standards and the possession of key positions.
Third, the main measures to protect intellectual property rights in China.
While China is accelerating its integration into the global economy, the protection of intellectual property rights is also a red light for the development of China. When more and more China enterprises and China products play an important role in the global market, the intellectual property crisis casts a shadow over this globalization process. Therefore, in the face of fierce international economic and trade competition and profound intellectual property barriers, we should strive to create a good environment for developing and owning independent intellectual property rights, and constantly improve the ability and level of relevant enterprises to use intellectual property rights.
(A) upgrading the intellectual property protection strategy to the national strategic level
China is a country with a lot of intellectual property rights, but it is a big country with non-intellectual property rights. Especially after China's entry into WTO, the opening of the market has made China face fierce international competition, and developed countries have posed a threat to China's economic development in terms of patents. Only by attaching importance to the issue of intellectual property rights as a major national strategy can we turn the intellectual property crisis into a good opportunity for scientific and technological development and fundamentally eliminate the obstacles restricting trade development.
First, improve the intellectual property laws and regulations system in China. The government should build an intellectual property protection mechanism for enterprises, improve the legal system of intellectual property rights, and attach importance to using legal means to protect intellectual property rights. Only in this way can we mobilize the enthusiasm and creativity of relevant enterprises and institutions and their intellectual property rights, create and produce more independent intellectual property rights quickly and well, and ensure that Chinese enterprises maintain their own advantages in international competition.
Second, the state provides funds to support the development and formation of intellectual property rights of enterprises. In the process of developing and forming independent intellectual property rights, many enterprises are facing the problem of insufficient funds. Therefore, the state can provide financial support for the development and formation of intellectual property rights of enterprises through various ways and means to enhance their economic strength and international competitiveness. Such as the use of foreign trade development funds, preferential credit rates, policy loans and loan interest subsidies to increase financial support. At the same time, establish and improve the income-generating investment system, and make full use of social funds to support the formation of independent intellectual property rights and product export.
Third, encourage enterprises to cultivate independent innovation ability and core competitiveness. The current intellectual property crisis is fundamentally the result of China enterprises' lack of technological innovation and core competitiveness. Therefore, enterprises should attach importance to their own technological innovation and realize the importance of intellectual property rights under the conditions of international trade liberalization. Increase investment in technology research and development to form the core competitiveness of enterprises.
(B) change ideas and strengthen learning.
China is a member of the WTO. Enterprises should pay attention to the provisions of WTO and TRIPS on intellectual property rights in China when conducting international trade. At the same time, we should also understand the laws and practices of major trading countries, master their main legal provisions, legislative trends and court cases, and avoid falling into the trap of intellectual property protection to a greater extent. Of course, while earnestly fulfilling our obligations, we should also fully learn from foreign experience in order to fully enjoy the rights of WTO members and protect China's industry and market.
First, change ideas and actively respond to intellectual property litigation. Change the passive attitude towards intellectual property litigation in the past and actively respond to the lawsuit. There are many enterprises in China without any infringement, but they often give up the opportunity to respond because they are afraid that the lawsuit will affect the development of enterprises, and lose the opportunity to defend their rights in vain; And the enterprises that have carried out the infringement have to respond passively for one reason or another, and finally have to pay more than the normal level of infringement fees; At the same time, China's business circles should improve the establishment and utilization of chambers of commerce, and form an enterprise alliance with effective organization, coordination and extensive participation, which is conducive to strengthening the search for help and support from various forces including the government.
Second, speed up personnel training and management. People-oriented technology. To develop, own and use independent intellectual property rights of enterprises, we must first attach importance to the role of intellectual capital, which is most concentrated in human talents and values. At present, the competition between enterprises and even countries is actually the competition of talents. Whoever has more talents can gain an advantage in the competition. In recent years, multinational companies have increased their talent plunder in China. If China enterprises do not attach importance to talents, they will lose the power source for future development. At the same time, enterprises should speed up the reform of their own talent system and structure, establish and improve a perfect incentive and reward mechanism, and cultivate their own talent team. Strengthen study, get familiar with and master all kinds of knowledge and rules of intellectual property rights as soon as possible, strengthen the atmosphere of learning for all, and let the whole society understand the importance of intellectual property protection.