On Thursday 24 April, the World Trade Organization (WTO) made public a panel report on the dispute between China and the EU over access to the courts to enforce certain intellectual property rights.
In 2022, the EU opened a WTO dispute against Beijing, accusing it of preventing holders of rights to crucial technologies (Standard Essential Patents, or SEPs) from enforcing them in courts outside China, through ‘anti-suit injunctions’ (see EUROPE 13079/23).
While the panel acknowledged the existence of such practices in China, it rejected the charge that China’s ‘anti-suit injunctions’ violated the WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
The arbitrators also rejected the EU’s suggestion that China had imposed five ‘anti-suit injunctions’ “in a non-uniform, non-impartial and unreasonable manner” and that this was incompatible with the WTO Accession Protocol.
However, the panel did acknowledge that China had not fulfilled its transparency obligations by not publishing the final judicial decisions and by not responding to the EU’s requests for information.
Even before the publication of this report by the panel, the EU and China had agreed, from 2023, to use the alternative appeal procedure, which makes it possible to circumvent the blocking of the traditional Appellate Body. The dispute will therefore be reviewed on appeal in the coming months. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)