On July 23, 2014, Dacheng’s Beijing-based partner Deng Zhisong was interviewed by Economic News (“Jingji xinxi lianbo” in Chinese pinyin), a CCTV-2 program on the eye-catching anti-trust investigation into Qualcomm.
Since this February when the National Development and Reform Commission (“NDRC”) announced an investigation into Qualcomm, the company’s chief executive has come to China three times to face NDRC’s challenge over the collection of high patent licensing fees and mobile phone tie-in arrangement.
In Deng’s opinion, the exceedingly high patent licensing fees sought after by Qualcomm constitutes “unfairly high price” prohibited by Section 1, Article 17 of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law and “abuse of a dominant position” by a standard-essential patent holder, which necessitates the intervention of the anti-monopoly law to strike a balance. In the meantime, open sources show that half of Qualcomm’s $20bn revenue come from China. If the investigation ends up imposing fines on Qualcomm, Deng says the amount would set a new record since the Anti-Monopoly Law took effect in 2008. So far, the highest record of anti-trust fines ever imposed by NDRC is the RMB670mln against foreign infant formula makers last June.
Please click the link below to watch the interview: http://tv.cntv.cn/video/C10330/7686f25b11be4f8c9b0b084932d7b26b