Bad faith litigation of patents as abuse of dominance under Pakistan’s competition act: How and why to improve?

Bad faith litigation of patents as abuse of dominance under Pakistan’s competition act: How and why to improve?

Even though justice’s accessibility is a globally acknowledged fundamental human right, the European Union and China’s comparative experiences show that, under competition law, bad faith-related lawsuits involving intellectual property (IP) might amount to exploitation of power. The study found that, in Pakistan, there are some enforcement concerns which include a weak system for examining IP (patents), lack of definite judicial precedents, inadequate barriers against bad faith allegations, and restricted openness and patent data accessibility. This essay carefully analyses the bad faith litigation of IP within the antitrust legislation in China and the European Union and makes the case that their approaches are fundamentally comparable. China has enacted, more contemporary, regulations regarding bad faith litigation aiming to cope with such issues. This article proposes that Pakistan ought to implement clear criteria for the bad faith lawsuit of IP under the Competition Act and construct an antitrust counterclaim in an IP infringing action based on comparative experiences. Pakistan should allow opposition to antitrust in an IP-infringing case by employing a two-pronged methodology to determine whether IP litigation was filed in bad faith. Pakistan should outline two distinct situations: the first is regarding a situation in which the owner of the IP knew it hadn't been eligible for any sort of IP rights and the subsequent one talks about a situation in which the related IP turns into the (de facto) standard.