How should one understand the overlapping rules enacted by SAMR on IP, SEPS and antitrust? Is a new wave of legislation under way? Is China planning on ramping up antitrust enforcement in SEPs? What do these legislative experiments portend in terms of China’s commitments to rule of law and the challenges faced by high tech companies – whether implementer or licensor in China?
A roundup of recent English language resources on antimonopoly law reform and comments on new rules from SAMR.
Beginning October 6, 2021, Berkeley Law begins a four-part series on IP enforcement in China. The highly successful four-part SEP series of Prof Hao Yuan continues on October 15 with a discussion of the role of antitrust in SEP licensing and litigation.
Two books, China and the WTO: Why Multilateralism Still Matter (Mavroidis and Sapir), and Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism (Zhang) consider trade and competition law aspects of the U.S.-China trade dispute. They discuss the treatment of state-owned enterprises under international trade and domestic competition law rules. They also discuss IP-specific issues, particularly forced technology transfer by or for the state and the control of abusive technology licensing practices, including the licensing of standards essential patents and China’s discriminatory Administration of Technology Import/Export Regulations (“TIER”), which has since been amended. The books and article are part of several academic and popular discourses on the disruptive and unpredictable policy agenda of the Trump administration, which also provide cautionary roadmaps for future engagement – or confrontation – with China.
There is still time to register for “Quantum Leap: Developments in China IP Law over the Past Two Years”. The program will discuss the major changes in Chinese IP that have occurred […]
There are numerous heirarchies to Chinese legislation and IP laws are certainly not an except to this. Due to the government reorganization in 2018, Chinese efforts to become an innovative economy, and external political pressure from the Trade War, there has also been extensive external political pressure on Chinese IP legislative efforts. The different approaches to legislating may indicate potential weaknesses in the laws. They may also be the outcome of internal bureaucratic struggles.
CAI, RCEP and the Phase 1 Trade Agreement all responded to different economic, trade demands and political urgencies. The CAI has been understood as a sign by the Biden administration that the European Union will pursue its own trade relationship with China based on its own interests. While the IP and forced technology transfer provisions of the Phase 1 Agreement helped establish new standards in China that are applicable to all countries, the non-IP provisions of the Phase 1 Agreement were not kind to Europeans and other allies in their preferential buying requirements. The EU, however, did not significantly advance IP protections in the CAI text. The bright side of this picture is that the CAI leaves space for the United States and the European Union to further coordinate strategies on IP protection in China.
The Civil Code of China has now been enacted by the National People’s Congress (eff. January 1, 2021). As previously discussed in this blog, the Civil Code now incorporates the technology contract […]
This guest blog has been written by Prof. HAO Yuan of Tsinghua University School of Law. China is facing a pressing need to build its innovation-driven economy. To facilitate key features of […]
This blog provides an update on recent legislative developments involving the interface between IP and China’s Anti-Monopoly law. On November 28, 2019, SAMR published the Anti-Monopoly Compliance Guidelines for Undertakings (Draft for […]
Mark Allen Cohen (柯恒} is a Distinguished Senior Fellow, Director and Lecturer of the Asia IP Project at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley. In total, he has nearly 40 years of private sector, public sector, etc., in-house and academic experience on IPR issues in China, including numerous publications and awards. This is his private blog.
China IPR - Intellectual Property Developments in China 