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By Susan Ning, Kate Peng and Lingbo Wei King & Wood Mallesons’ Antitrust Group

NING, Susan (Xuanfeng)彭荷月After more than a year’s investigation into Qualcomm, the NDRC made an announcement of its investigation decision through press release on 10 February 2015.[1] About 20 days later, the NDRC published the full-text of the decision on its official website on 2 March 2015. The decision provided a comprehensive analysis on the definition of the relevant markets, Qualcomm’s dominant position and abusive conducts that are deemed violating the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law (“AML”), which sent a warning to patent-heavy companies to review their business practices in China.

We hereby set out the points below to provide insight into the facts and factors that the NDRC considered in its decision making process.
Continue Reading NDRC’s Qualcomm Decision：A Warning to Patent-heavy Companies

By Susan Ning, Kate Peng and Lingbo Wei  King & Wood Mallesons’ Antitrust Group

NING, Susan (Xuanfeng)彭荷月On 10 February 2015, the NDRC announced its decision in relation to the abuse of dominance investigation into Qualcomm. Following the announcement, the NDRC held a press conference and revealed more details about the case.

According to Mr. Xu Kunlin, the Director General of the Anti-monopoly Bureau of the NDRC, two US companies filed a complaint to the NDRC about Qualcomm’s alleged abuse of dominance in 2009. In November 2013, the NDRC initiated an investigation into Qualcomm and conducted a dawn raid at Qualcomm’s Beijing and Shanghai offices in the same month. It is reported that during the proceedings, Qualcomm delegates had made 28 visits to the NDRC. Mr. Xu personally attended 8 of those visits. Finally, yesterday the NDRC announced its decision, imposing a fine of RMB 6.088 billion (approximately USD 975 million).  The fine is the largest in China’s corporate history, outnumbering all fines imposed by the NDRC in 2014 (RMB 1.8 billion in total) by more than double.  In addition to the fine, Qualcomm has made commitments to the NDRC to take several rectification measures.

According to press releases, Mr. Xu indicated that the full text of the decision will be published in the coming days.Continue Reading Qualcomm Investigation Finally Closed: Some Changes in Business Model in Addition to an RMB 6.088 Billion Fine

Interviewed by Serwat Perwaiz, Editor of King & Wood’s Publication Group

As China’s economic and social presence on electronic forms of communication continues to develop and expand, the country’s regulatory bodies are stepping up to the challenge to keep pace with the new developments. We are lucky to have Dr. Martin Cave, Professor and Director of the Centre for Management under Regulation, Warwick Business School, to provide us his comments on the hot topics of Technology and the Internet.

When asked about his key areas of interest, he commented that he was particularly interested in “reform and liberalisation of the radio spectrum, which can support the amazing growth of voice and broadband wireless technologies we have seen in the past decade.” He went on to discuss how the standard model in Europe and the United States, which “relies on maximising competition and reducing regulation to the minimum, with a relatively small role for government policy and government subsidy” differs significantly from models in Asian countries where “government policy is a much stronger driver.”

Continue Reading Expert Look at Communications Technology: Comments by Dr. Martin Cave