Risks of Grant-back Provisions in Licensing Agreements: A warning to Patent–heavy Companies

By Susan Ning [1], Ting Gong, Yuanshan Li

I.  Summary

In recent years, the interplay between intellectual property rights (“IPRs”) and antitrust issues has been on the radar of antitrust authorities in China.[2] Since 2014, the National Development and Reform Commission (“NDRC”) and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (“SAIC”) have launched a number of investigations relating to the abuse of IPRs, which includes the high-profile investigation into IDC and Qualcomm.[3