A Study On The Governance Against Standard-Essential Patent Holder’s Abusive Acts Of Seeking Injunctive Relief Under Anti-monopoly Law

Seeking injunctive relief is one of the fundamental rights for a patent holder,but a standard could act as a platform for a Standard-Essential Patent(SEP)holder to unreasonably exercise this kind of rights,resulting in the effects of eliminating or restricting competition,and ultimately infringing competition order and consumers’ welfare.In regard to the front-burner issue of whether it is necessary to regulate a SEP holder’s act of inappropriately seeking and enforcing injunction,there still exists a great divergence at national and international level.Recent practices in some jurisdictions have shown that certain authorities have begun to treat this behavior as an act of abusing dominant position,the big difficulty,however,relies on how to clarify the factors and criteria that determine whether or not a particular act is abusive.The global world,at present,keeps open the cutting-edge subject in question,and making the judgment criteria clear and unitive becomes quite urgent.Therefore,in this context,this paper aims to,from a perspective of Antimonopoly Law,review the latest practices in various jurisdictions at first,then analyze the necessity of governing this sort of acts via Anti-monopoly Law and study the concrete elements when assessing whether this behavior constitutes an act of abusing dominant position.Specifically,apart from Sections “Introduction” and “Conclusion”,this paper is totally composed of four sections: Section one starts by defining the key terminologies,i.e.standard,SEP and injunctive relief,in order to fully clarify the origin of SEP and its potential anti-competitive effects when it is exercised by its owner through seeking injunction,thereby demonstrating the legitimacy of antitrust governance and analyzing the timing and path that Anti-monopoly Law works.Section two,for the purpose of comparative studying,mainly reviews both the domestic and abroad practical operations upon how antitrust authorities/judges/arbitrators determine the abuse of market dominant position concerning an abusive act of seeking injunction.Section three,as the most essential part of this paper,focuses on the specific prohibitive regulation of abusing market dominant position under Anti-monopoly Law,and concludes that antitrust authorities/judges/arbitrators could take into account relevant elements regarding SEP holders,SEP users as well as consumers,in order to bring the outcome of anti-monopoly regulation into full play.Section four,finally,goes back and focuses on Chinese status quo by introspecting its drawbacks and accordingly finding the way to improve them.