China Daily, the official English language newspaper, has stated that the Law, which comes into effect on August 1, will be enforced by the Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom), the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC).
Mofcom will deal with merger regulations, NDRC will handle price issues and SAIC will be responsible for cases looking at abuse of dominant position.
The SAIC has responsibility for registering and enforcing trade marks. SIPO, which grants patents, is a separate government agency.
Doug Clark, a partner of Lovells in Shanghai, told Managing IP that the division of enforcement powers was as expected, and that, although none of those agencies has any patent expertise, in the event of a case involving a patent claim "they would have to get SIPO involved".
George Chan, a partner of Kangxin Partners in Beijing, questioned how this divided enforcement mechanism would work in practice with a case such as the EU's high-profile investigation into Microsoft that looked at both price issues and abuse of dominant position.
The software company lost the case in the Court of First Instance of the European Court of Justice. The Court found that Microsoft had abused competition by refusing to provide "interoperability information" to competitors and by tying its Windows Media Player software to the purchase of Windows operating systems. It upheld a record fine of €497 million. Microsoft did not appeal the decision.
This month's edition of Managing IP has an article looking at the IP provisions of China's Anti-Monopoly Law in more depth.
