By Susan Ning, Kate Peng and Weiqing Qiu  King & Wood Mallesons’ Commercial & Regulatory Group

On April 7, 2015, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (“SAIC”) officially published the Rules on Prohibition of Abuses of Intellectual Property Rights for the Purposes of Eliminating or Restricting Competition (“SAIC IP Rules”). This is the first set of rules to implement the general principles recognized by Article 55 of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (“AML”) in the IPR sector. The SAIC IP Rules introduce a safe harbor mechanism which validates certain intellectual property right (“IPR”) related restraints.

During 2015, the Antitrust Committee under the State Council entrusted four authorities with drafting the Antitrust Guidelines regarding Prohibition of Intellectual Property Abuse (“IP Guidelines”). Amongst the four authorities, SAIC published its seventh version of draft IP Guidelines on February 5 2016 (“draft SAIC IP Guidelines”) and the National Development and Reform Commission (“NDRC”) published their second draft on December 31, 2015 (“draft NDRC IP Guidelines”). Both the SAIC and NDRC draft IP Guidelines set out an IPR sector safe harbor.
Continue Reading The Antitrust Safe Harbor for Exercising IPRs: More Details are Needed for its Scope, Thresholds and Compatibility