The Interaction of IPRs and Antitrust: From the Perspective of Chinese Private Antitrust Litigations

In recent years, the complicated relationship between intellectual property rights and antitrust have drawn increasing attention of Chinese courts in private antitrust litigations. China’s Supreme People’s Court has made great efforts trying to find a balancing approach when assessing antitrust behaviors in the form of exercise of intellectual property rights, by considering both the factors of market competition and innovation in the individual case. Two representative cases, the Transformer Charger Case and the Hitachi Metals Case, can provide some guidance to better understand Chinese courts’ attitudes towards the interaction between antitrust law and intellectual property law, against the backdrop of patent settlement agreements and non-SEPS. This article summarizes the development of related legislation in China regarding the interaction between IPRs and antitrust law at first, then introduces in detail the recent judicial precedents reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court, to highlight those fiercely disputed issues, the court findings, and various views thereon, with the hope to shed some light on the understanding of this topic.

By Hao Zhan, Ying Song & Ruichen Liu^[1]

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the complicated relationship between intellectual property rights and antitrust have drawn increasing attention of Chinese courts in private antitrust litigations. China’s Supreme People’s Court has made great efforts trying to find a balancing approac