用好电商专利侵权纠纷中的反向行为保全

1. 引言

电商目前已经成为主流的销售模式，在电子商务平台上销售产品的知识产权侵权纠纷案件也越来越多。在发生侵权纠纷时，知识产权的权利人为了及时中止损失，可以在案件没有最后结果的情况下，即要求电商平台删除被诉侵权产品的链接。但如果被诉侵权人认为自己不侵权或者权利人的知识产权（如专利权）不稳定可能被无效，被诉侵权人又可以反过来请求电商平台不断开链接或恢复链接；被诉侵权人这种请求继续链接而销售的，应该提供担保，此行为称为反向行为保全。

2. 案例介绍

2.1 案件背景

(2020) The Supreme People’s Court of P.R.C. (SPC)’s Intellectual Property Court Civil Final Appeal No. 993 disclosed a case of reverse behavior preservation.

In this case, the utility model patent owner of the “flat mop cleaning tool” claimed that the infringing products sold by the accused infringer (hereinafter referred to as the defendant) on Tmall infringed its patent rights, and requested the defendant to stop the infringement, and required Tmall to delete and disconnect the sales links involved and compensate for economic losses. The first instance court supported the patent owner’s request, and Tmall deleted the sales links involved.

2.2 反向行为保全申请

During the second instance, as “November 11（major festivals for promotions on China’s e-commerce platforms）” was approaching, the defendant filed an application for reverse behavior preservation with the Supreme Court, requesting the court to order Tmall to immediately restore the sales link involved in the case, and stated that if the link was not restored, the defendant would suffer irreparable losses during the “November 11” period; at this time, CNIPA also made a review decision on the request for invalidation of the patent involved, declaring that all the patent rights involved were invalid.

3. 最高法院的裁定

针对被告的反向行为保全申请，最高法于第二日作出行为保全裁定，责令天猫立即恢复被告的被诉侵权产品销售链接，但冻结被告支付宝账户部分款项共计1560万元作为担保。

4. 裁定理由

4.1 专利权的不确定性

最高法之所以冻结被告账号的部分款项，是因为，虽然涉案专利被国知局宣告无效，但专利权人可能提起行政诉讼，涉案专利的有效性还处于不确定状态。

4.2 市场竞争影响

如果不恢复被告产品的链接，有可能损害被告的市场竞争优势或商业机会，导致被告在双十一期间的销售受到严重影响。

4.3 专利权人的损害

Restoring the link will not lead to the complete replacement of the patent owner’s product, and the damage to the patent owner is relatively small. Therefore, SPC ordered Tmall to immediately restore the defendant’s sales link for the alleged infringing products, but froze part of the defendant’s Alipay account and wait for the final result of the administrative lawsuit for patent invalidation.

5. 法律义务和审查标准

In this case, the SPC believes that: when the e-commerce platform operator (Tmall) receives a notice from the intellectual property rights holder containing preliminary evidence of infringement, it has a legal obligation to take necessary measures such as deletion, blocking, disconnecting links, and terminating transactions and services. However, after taking the above-mentioned sales prohibition measures, if the links are not restored, the defendant’s legitimate interests will suffer irreparable damage. The defendant can apply to the SPC for reverse behavior preservation and require the e-commerce platform to take behavior preservation measures such as restoring links.

6. 法院审查考虑因素

During the court’s legal review, when determining whether to restore the link for reverse behavior preservation measures, the following factors should be mainly considered:

（1）恢复请求是否具有事实基础和法律依据；

（2）不恢复链接是否会对恢复申请人（被告）造成难以弥补的损害；

（3）恢复链接对专利权人可能造成的损害是否会超过不恢复链接对被告造成的损害；

（4）恢复链接是否会损害社会公共利益；

（5）是否存在不宜恢复链接的其他情形。

7. 结论

Intellectual property rights such as patents are powerful means for market competition or cooperation. How to make good use of intellectual property rights such as patents in market activities is an important part of the normal operation of market economic activities. In this case, if the patent owner’s patent is finally declared invalid, the defendant will obtain huge profits during the November 11 promotion period; but if the patent owner’s patent is finally maintained valid, the defendant’s product involved in the case infringes the defendant’s rights, and the defendant’s reverse behavior preservation will cause the defendant to suffer a huge blow.

原文链接：用好电商专利侵权纠纷中的反向行为保全

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