Competition Corner

On June 8, 2022, the Department of Justice, on behalf of itself and the United States Patent and Trademark Office as well as the National Institute for Standards and Technology, announced that the agencies have concluded that “the best course of action for promoting both competition and innovation in the standards ecosystem” would be to withdraw the agencies’ joint 2019 Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments.

On July 10, 2021, the State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) of the People’s Republic of China (China or the PRC) announced that it had denied the merger of online-game streaming companies Huya Company and Douyu International Holdings Co., Ltd., which are first and second in market share for online-game streaming in China.

On August 6, 2020, the Chinese antitrust agency, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), published new IP antitrust guidelines—the State Council Anti-Monopoly Committee Anti-Monopoly Guidelines in the Field of Intellectual Property Rights (the “IP Guidelines”).

On September 10, 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) took the “extraordinary step” of updating its 2015 Business Review Letter to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Incorporated (2015 BRL), explaining that the 2015 BRL “has been cited, frequently and incorrectly, as an endorsement of the IEEE Policy.” The DOJ noted that instead of resulting in expected procompetitive benefits following the 2015 BRL, the IEEE policy “seems instead to have dampened enthusiasm for the IEEE process.”

As many anticipated, the Ninth Circuit reversed Judge Koh’s ruling that Qualcomm, Inc. had an antitrust duty to deal with its rival chip makers. The panel criticized Judge Koh for focusing on harm to downstream original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers rather than on actual anticompetitive effects in the purportedly restrained chip market and rejected Judge Koh’s reliance on the smallest saleable unit test underlying her conclusion that Qualcomm’s royalty rates were unreasonably high.

In a recent speech, Makan Delrahim, Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice announced that he has directed the Division to review its International Guidelines to, among other things, ensure that they “adequately reflect the importance of comity” with international enforcers, particularly with respect to remedies.