Abstracts
The past two years have seen a very active enforcement of Anti-Monopoly law (AML) in China, especially in the intellectual property rights intensive industries. The enforcement agencies frequently carry out investigations into international companies in Internet and ICT industries. The "Qualcomm" decision made by NDRC (China’s national development and reform commission) in 2015 has drawn great attention not only in China but also worldwide, as some disputed approaches applied and remedies imposed by NDRC showed a relative strict regulation on price-related abusive conduct of practicing IPR. The balance between the protection of intellectual property and effective competition is always a tough ongoing topic. In this context, on the last day of 2015 NDRC invited public comments on its draft "Anti-Monopoly Guideline on Intellectual Property Abuse". Together with this, drafts from other two enforcement agencies and SIPO (State IP office) will be submitted to the Anti-Monopoly Committee under State Council for review in the first half of this year. In the light of the enforcement practices, the guideline intends to clarify and improve already established principles regarding the prohibition of abusive use of IPRs under Chinese AML.
This report will give an overview to the guideline drafts, and particularly comment on the draft of NDRC. The focal points in this draft guideline will be discussed, such as the unfairly high royalties, no-challenge clauses, and injunction relieves of IPR holders, etc. Moreover, the report intends to offer a glance into the public enforcement of AML status quo, and discuss the inconsistencies between the statutory provisions and practice of law, given the broad discretion of the enforcement agencies.
About the Speaker
Ms. Yukun Xiao LL.M (LMU), Ph.D candidate of Prof. Ackermann at the LMU. Her research fields include international competition law, innovation and competition policy. Her Ph.D research focuses on the public and private enforcement of the competition law in EU, Germany and China. Since 2014 Yukun Xiao has worked for Fraunhofer Gesellschaft at the department of IP commercialization. In January 2016 Fraunhofer Gesellschaft was invited by Delegation of the European Union and Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Beijing to comment on the NDRC Draft Guideline. Yukun Xiao was responsible for drawing up the first draft of opinions at Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.
About the Discussant:
Ms. Xin Zhao, PhD. Candidate of Tongji University Law School, Shanghai, China. She was Fulbright Visiting Scholar in The George Washington University and DAAD Scholarship holder. Her research fields are Anti-Monopoly Law and Patent Law.