Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The European Union launched a new case at the World Trade Organisation against China’s regulations on royalty rates for high-tech patents.
The European Commission filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization on January 20, 2025, against China. It pointed to China’s “unfair and illegal” practice of putting worldwide royalty rates for European Union standard essential patents without the patent owner’s permission.
It accused China of authorising its courts to set worldwide rates for high-tech EU businesses, particularly in the telecoms domain.
This pressures innovative European high-tech companies into lowering their rates on a worldwide basis, thus giving Chinese manufacturers cheaper access to those European technologies unfairly,
the EU said in a statement.
The EU’s vibrant high-tech industries must be allowed to compete fairly and on a level playing field,
stated Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s trade commissioner.
Where this is not the case, the Commission takes decisive action to protect their rights.
In the first step of WTO dispute settlement, the EU Commission has requested consultations with China. If no acceptable solution is figured within 60 days, the EU executive can request that an adjudicating panel be formed. The average length of a panel proceeding is 12 months.
How did the 2022 EU case against China unfold?
In early 2022, the European Commission opened a similar large trade case against China at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The concern here was Chinese anti-suit injunctions. The EU requested China to initiate talks with it over the measures which compromised the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights.
The move was executed on February 18, 2022. The European Union had claimed that China employed anti-suit injunctions as a means of forcing high-tech European companies to negotiate lower patent royalties. The use of such legal injunctions was thought to be one of the means to deter intellectual property rights, which may adversely affect innovation and competitiveness in the European Union.
