FMMA Issues Antitrust Guidelines for Standard-Essential Patents

         The General Administration of Market Supervision (GAMS) has recently issued the Anti-Monopoly Guidelines on Standard Essential Patents to the public.

　　In the era of digital economy, technical standardization plays an important role in improving interconnectivity among products, promoting international and domestic trade and facilitating economic development, and the essential and irreplaceable patents contained in technical standards are called standard-essential patents.

　　The Guidelines consists of six chapters and 22 articles, defining concepts related to standard-essential patents, proposing principles for analyzing monopolistic behaviors involving standard-essential patents as well as ideas for defining the relevant markets, and establishing rules for pre- and post-subscription supervision. Strengthening information disclosure, licensing commitments, good faith negotiations and other behavioral guidelines and high-risk behavior prevention, is conducive to the majority of operators to provide a clear and unambiguous behavior to follow, to promote fair competition in the market, and to protect the power of industrial innovation and development.

　　According to the introduction, standard essential patent licensing covers many fields such as wireless communications, audio and video, Internet of Things, etc., the subject tends to be diversified, the mode is increasingly complex, and there is an ambiguous zone between normal commercial behavior and anti-competitive behavior, which increases the unpredictability of the enterprise's business activities, and also poses a challenge to the enforcement of anti-monopoly regulation.

　　The issue of fair competition in the field of standard-essential patents involves both domestic and international markets and is closely related to the innovation and development of many industries. The formulation and promulgation of the Guidelines is conducive to proactively conforming to the trend of international governance and industrial development, promoting the improvement of China's standard-essential patent governance system, releasing in a timely, accurate and sufficient manner the policy guidance of our government to protect intellectual property rights and promote fair competition in a coordinated manner, and promoting the creation of a unified, standardized and orderly market environment that encourages innovation and development, which is also conducive to better participation in the global governance of fair competition, serving the opening up of the country to the outside world at a high level and Enhance the international competitiveness of China's industries. (Source: Xinhua)