The Regulation of Injunctive Relief on Standard Essential Patents Within China's Anti-monopoly Law

Competition concerns arising from the seeking of injunctions by FRAND-encumbered (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) standard essential patent (SEP) owners have become a contentious issue. This issue has attracted the attention of many competition enforcement authorities and no consensus is reached as to the compatibility of such injunctive relief with competition law. This is also a hard and challenging problem faced by China. A coherent and balanced response is urgently needed under current China's legal framework. Therefore, this article proposes that a basic regulating approach should be established first to treat the seeking of injunctions by FRAND-encumbered SEP owners as an independent anti-competitive practice prohibited by the Anti-monopoly Law. Then, an analysis framework should be established to consider the circumstances in which and the extent to which such seeking of injunctions should be limited from the perspective of competition enforcement. The behaviour of both SEP owners and SEP users should be properly examined.