Antitrust Regulation of IPRs – China's First Proposal

Abstract

In June, 2014, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce published the Regulation on the Prohibition of Conduct Eliminating or Restricting Competition by Abusing Intellectual Property Rights (Consultation Draft). This will be the first regulation dealing with the application of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) to the intellectual property rights (IPRs) domain.

In our view, while the draft SAIC IPR Regulation is about IPRs and hence about innovation, it is itself as cautious as it is conservative. After close to five years of researching, drafting and consultations, the draft regulation reflects a "compromise" – i.e., mixing both foreign and domestic elements and reconciling various interests.

This article aims to provide an overview on the pre-existing Chinese law in this area, and then give a brief introduction to some of the key provisions of the draft SAIC IPR Regulation.

Keywords: Antitrust; anti-monopoly; competition law; AML; IPR; SAIC; China; FRAND; SEP