Antitrust Liabilities For SEP Holders - A Review Of Huawei v IDC

On February 10 2015, China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced the results of its antimonopoly investigation of US-based Qualcomm. The commission found that the company held a dominant position in the market for the licensing of standard essential CDMA/ WCDMA/LTE patents for wireless communications and for baseband chips. The commission further found that the company had abused the dominant market position through several conducts including charging unfairly high patent royalties, tying licensing of non-standard essential patents without justifiable reasons, and adding unreasonable conditions to the sale of baseband chips. The commission ordered the company to cease its relevant illegal conducts and imposed a fine of Rmb6.1 billion ($974 million). This is a record fine imposed by China's anti-monopoly law enforcement agencies, and has drawn a high level of attention.