A Study On The Legal Regulation Of The Tying In NDRC’s Qualcomm Decision

As one of the most influential competition law systems worldwide, EU competition law has rich experiences in legislations and enforcements on abuses of dominance. Tying is one of the common abuses, which does harm to market competition and consumer welfare. In the context of EU competition law, there are economic theories for tying and legal assessments on tying. On the contrary, Chinese Anti-monopoly Law only regulates tying in principle, and lacks of legal assessments in practice.In March of 2015, National Development and Reform Commission (hereinafter referred to NDRC) made a written decision of administrative penalty on Qualcomm Incorporated (hereinafter referred to Qualcomm) for its abuses of dominance. In this written decision, Qualcomm was accused by NDRC, since it tied wireless communications standard essential patents (hereinafter referred to SEPs) to wireless communications standard non-SEPs. This paper would borrow experiences from EU competition law and its leading cases Microsoft (2004) to analysis Qualcomm’s tying. This paper is consisted of five chapters.Chapter one is to tell the research backgrounds, significance, status and methods. Chapter two is an introduction of tying. On the one hand, this chapter analyzes legality and rationality of tying from the perspectives of economic theories and legal standards. On the other hand, this chapter introduces the five-pronged test on tying in the context of EU competition law.Chapter three is about Qualcomm’s case and its tying. This chapter analyzes Qualcomm’s dominance in relevant markets and made a conclusion of its tying in the area of wireless communications standard SEPs.Chapter four is comparisons between Qualcomm’s case and Microsoft case on tying. Microsoft’s case is introduced firstly in this chapter. Then this paper makes comparisons between these two cases from five perspectives, finding legal issues on Qualcomm’s tying.Chapter five is for conclusion and advices. Having regard to legal principles, economic factors, case guiding systems and judicial interpretations, this chapter makes suggestions to perfect the legal assessments on tying in the context of Chinese Anti-monopoly law.