Analysis Of Tying Acts In The American Qualcomm Antitrust Case

February 2015,National Development and Reform Commission announced the result of the Qualcomm antitrust case,which ordered the Qualcomm to stop the illegal action of abusing the market ascendancy,and imposed a fine of 8%of the 2013 annual sales market in our country,a total of 6.088 billion yuan.This case shows that the goal of protecting patents is.to encourage innovation and competition,but when the holders intend to eliminate,restrict,and distort the market competition by the way of abusing dominant market position,their behavior should be punished by the anti-monopoly law.Illegal tying sale is one of the abusing behaviors,and its constitutive requirements include:dominant position in the relevant market;two independent products,compulsive buying behavior,restriction of competition and no objective rationality.Qualcomm has lots of patens of standard technology for wireless communication,and each patent separately constitute an independent relevant product market.Wireless standard essential patents held by Qualcomm will be licensed together,so the relevant market of the case is a collection of each independent relevant product market.Besides,Qualcomm enjoy the share of 100%in the market with a strong control ability,so it has dominant power in the market which has been full utilized to sale independent non-essential standard patents at the same time.But Qualcomm fails to make a reasonable explanation for its tying behavior by providing evidence,and also leads to a limit for other operators entering the market and gaining the market share.Therefore,the tying behavior of Qualcomm is in violation of the anti-monopoly law,and the NDRC's legal punishment is reasonable.In addition,the laws under the framework of anti-monopoly law involving illegal tying in our country are principled strong.In order to further improve laws,we need to define the judgment standard of illegal tying sale,list the reasonable reason,perfect the administrative liability and civil liability,and establish a unified enforcement agency for anti-monopoly law.