Ever tried parking legally in the Big Apple, only to find a ticket awaiting upon your return? We've all been there, unfortunately. And now it appears that the same frustration may be coming to patent holders that own technology that other Chinese companies find to be attractive.
For the past year, antitrust enforcement agencies in China have published draft guidelines designed to inform companies how the agencies will apply antitrust law to the exercise of patents and other intellectual property rights. But do those guidelines provide meaningful guidance in an area of regulatory uncertainty, or are they written in a way to lend themselves to whatever interpretation the regulators see fit in the interest of giving Chinese companies a competitive advantage?
In the below op-ed, republished from Huffington Post, Washington D.C. partner Jay Jurata warns about some of the current language in the draft guidelines. He discusses how the current language could be used to justify compelling a company to give away its own, proprietary technology to its competitors. He also explains how the draft guidelines could be used to force a non-Chinese company to license its proprietary technology to a Chinese company, while leaving itself defenseless to a countersuit for infringing the Chinese company's patents. Finally, Jurata calls upon the next presidential administration, whoever it may be, to move this alarming issue up on the agenda in US-China trade talks before it further drags down the US technology sector.
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