Competition Law & Intellectual Property Law: An Interface
- IJLLR Journal
- Jun 13
- 2 min read
Dr Siddharth Deoras, ICFAI University Raipur
Introduction
Competition law acknowledges the investment of intellectual property rights in promoting competition in the market economy. The common objective behind framing of both the laws can be ascertained as promoting innovation, creativity and a better market for consumers. A monopoly right is given to the creator of IPR for a particular period in appreciation and justification of his efforts, whereas competition law also recognizes the IPR by providing exclusive exemptions for the same. Competition laws generally protect the IPR from its purview. When the holder of the IPR abuses his dominanting position in the market, there is no exception from the application of the competition law. The doctrine of essential facilities provides access to the essential facilities to the competitors in view of the pubic interest and public welfare. Market efficiency and consumer welfare are the ultimate objectives of both intellectual property rights and the competition law. From the legal perspective, the latter encourages enterprises to be more efficient and reduce the costs of products and services which will in turn lead to reduced prices and improved quality. IPR on the other hand provides legal means to recover the investment by extending a monopoly in relation to its subject matter for fixed duration. Thus, it serves as a twin tool of monopoly and competition. However, the philosophy of IPR is not applicable to competition law. As competition law is considered to be the most appropriate form of legislation to curb the abuse of IPR. In this regard they compliment each other. This shows that both are separate rights having equal value as far as legal principles are concerned. Though an exclusive right to perform commercial activity is provided to the holder of IPR it does not include automatically the right to practice monopoly in a market. Even if the monopoly is practiced in any case, it will not violate the provisions under competition law because it does not restrain monopoly per se.
