The European Commission has denounced China this Friday before the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the obstacles that Beijing places on European companies with patents in key technologies such as 5G when they resort to national courts to denounce their illegal appropriation by the industry China.
Brussels criticizes that patent owners who go to court outside China to assert their rights over protected technologies find themselves later with fines imposed by the Chinese authorities, which in practice means "pressuring them to set licenses below market prices”.
In the opinion of the Community Executive, which acts on behalf of the Twenty-seven in commercial matters, Chinese policy is "extremely harmful" to growth and innovation in the European Union because it prevents European technology companies from "exercising and enforcing the rights that they gives the technological advantage.
For all these reasons, the community services have chosen to request consultations with China in the framework of the WTO to resolve disputes, which is the first step in the dispute resolution process available to the multilateral organization.
negotiated solution
If the matter is not resolved within the 60-day period provided for in that phase, the EU could request the creation of a panel to rule on this matter, although community sources insist that there is still room for a negotiated solution if Beijing accepts the consultations, despite the fact that in the last year European attempts to solve the situation bilaterally did not prosper.
"European companies have the right to seek justice on fair terms when their technology is used illegally," defended the economic vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis, after the announcement of the latest case brought to the WTO for disputes against China.
Since August 2020, the European Commission has identified numerous Chinese court decisions aimed at putting pressure on companies from EU countries with high-tech patents and preventing them from defending their protection rights.
These are "anti-demand injunctions" that country manufacturers use to access European technology at a much lower price or even for free.
Brussels also maintains that these courts also resort to significant fines to "dissuade" the affected companies from going to court in their own countries, which hampers their rights.