| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 科技法律研究所 === 96 === As the transaction target of trading in technology, it is intangible and unspecific. However, technology won’t turn into benefit or take effect until it has been transferred, absorbed, and utilized. Due to the difficulty in technology assessing and appraising, its long and complicated process, and lots of uncertainty, technology trading is full of higher risk than the general one. In addition to the trade terms in quality, delivery, and price, which are essential in the international trade, technology trading furthermore focuses on its utility, confidentiality, and right’s protection.
Trading in technology engages in legal, technique, transaction, and management issues, including professional assessment, appraisal, certification, right & obligation stipulation, terms negotiation, confidential agreement, inspection, and after-sale management. In order to achieve a secure and efficient transaction, it requires to integrate all the related professional knowledge.
Through the modes of licensing, selling, purchasing, joint venture, joint developing, or strategic alliance, technology is able to be efficiently made use to its most beneficial effect and transferred into an intangible asset. First of all, it has to examine with due diligence the possible trading in technology, and then, finally decide whether to proceed this deal. However, a wrong decision in technology trading might jeopardize the company’s business and operation because critical technique is important asset and market competitiveness of the company. If such a key technology was lost, it would force a company to withdraw from the market, but for worse, it might occur in the competiveness loss of the entire industry influencing the national economy. The national security will be seriously threatened if the lost technology involving military secret. On the other hand, if a company can gain the right technology, it is not only to increase the company’s revenue and earning, but also can probably upgrade the competive advantage of the whole industry in the global market, and also prosper the national economy.
This study mainly focuses on the integration of different professional fields among law, technique, and international trade. With the analysis of the definition, risk, and current difficulties in technology trading, hopefully it’ll conclude a checking list of critical points in technology trading and come up a secure and efficient trading procedure or process for the particupants to follow and establish the strategy of legal engineering at the very beginning of new product or technology development. As a result, they’ll be able to either protect the developing intellectual property, or avoid IPRs infringement in the future, and furthermore, make use of the new technique to the most benefit through trading in technology. Its contents are as follows.
Firstly, it is to discuss technique defintion and the characteristic of technology trading. Technology is an intellectual property and a critical asset of a company, which has potentially economic value and represents the competitive advantage in the market. Then, it talks about the related regulations both internationally and domestically, including international conventions (IPRs related, Genetic resources, Traditional knowledge and folklore, and Bio-diversity), organizations (like WIPO and WTO), its future trends (such as environmental protection and energy saving), as well as laws and terms of international trade, IPRs, competition (unfair trade), and incentive in taxation. Then, it is about the difficulty of the current legal regulation in technology trade, mostly involving in the issues of technology valuation, competition orders, informative and confidential obligation, guarantee liability, patent litigation, and fundamental change of circumstances (rebus sic stantibus) . Then, it is case study, and via such an analsis, it is to come up the practical suggestion. That is; technology selecting and assessing, terms negotiating, informing and non-disclosing obligation before transaction, right and obligation stipulating during transaction, technology trasferring and utilizing, fulfillment and management after transaction. Finally, it’s conclusion. Owing to the characteristics of intangibility, uncertainty, secrecy, and information asymmetry between two sides, it adds the complication, difficulty, and risk onto the trading in technology. For the buyer or the seller, technology trading is just like executing activities of right and risk management during the whole transaction process. Nevertheless, new technology evolves as fast as time flies, and rules revise or new ones come out accordingly. In order to catch up the always changing trend and development, the best way is to set up a management system of the technology asset in the company.
|
|---|
