The Chinese State Administration for Industry and Commerce publishes guidelines on application of the anti-monopoly law to intellectual property rights

After years of discussions, China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce finally has released its guidelines on the application of the PRC Anti-Monopoly Law ("AML") to intellectual property rights ("Guidelines"). The Guidelines will come into force on August 1, 2015. The Guidelines are published amid widespread concerns that the AML is increasingly used in ways that favor Chinese licensees of intellectual property rights in their disputes with foreign licensors. In the Huawei/Interdigital case, the courts came to the conclusion that Interdigital's licensing practices amounted to an abuse of a dominant position, notably by tying standard-essential patents and non-essential patents but also because the royalty rate was too high. In the Qualcomm case, the National Development and