Standard-Essential Patents (“SEPs”) are patents which protect technology essential to compatibility with technical industry standards.

To avoid abuse by patent holders, SEPs are typically required to be licensed on Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms. However, what constitutes a FRAND rate is often unclear and can lead to protracted negotiations, hold-ups, and…

In Homer’s Odyssey, the wayward hero Odysseus is travelling by ship when beset by two threats within an arrow’s distance from one another: on one side is Scylla, a beast with many heads, and on the other side is Charybdis, a deadly whirlpool.[1]

This is an apt metaphor for what faces litigants trying…

Nearly six years and a half since four Ningbo magnetic material manufacturers (“Plaintiffs”) brought lawsuits against Hitachi Metals, Ltd. (“HML”), China’s Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court (“Court”) finally entered its first instance rulings on 23 April 2021, in which the Court found in favour of the Plaintiffs and ruled that…

Michael Gu / Grace Wu / Vivian Wang [1]Introduction

The year 2020 is an unusual year. The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and continued international trade tensions posed challenges to Chinese antitrust law enforcement authority, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). Particularly, the SAMR was tested on their ability to address the impacts coming…

China’s Supreme Court made a final judgment applying HCCH 1965 Service Convention to serve a Japanese litigant by post in 2019, under the situation where the government of Japan opposed to postal service but the Japanese litigant agreed to accept it.

I. Overview

On 22 Nov. 2019, the Supreme People’s Court of China (“the SPC”)

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Authors: Zhan Hao, Song Ying, Yang Zhan

In June 2020, the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation (“SAMR”) published a new book, the 2019 Compilation of Antitrust Regulations and Guidelines, which contains four previously unpublished guidelines covering the automotive sector, intellectual property rights, leniency policy, and commitments by undertakings. The Guidelines…

Author: Samuel Yang, Nicholas Blackmore

China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, recently enacted a Civil Code which will come into force on 1 January 2021. The Civil Code is a major landmark in Chinese legal history – it is the first comprehensive codification of the civil laws of the People’s Republic of China, which has …

China issues draft Data Security Law to solicit public opinions

中国公布《数据安全法》草案

Recently, the National People’s Congress released the Data Security Law of the People’s Republic of China (Draft) for public opinions (“Draft”).

Highlights of the draft include:

In order to establish data security system, the State implements:

• data classification and grading protection system:

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