Discriminatory Pricing Of Standard Essential Patents And Enterprises' R&D

Most of the electronic products used in people's daily lives,such as mobile phones,personal computers,televisions and audio systems,rely on certain technical standards to enable interoperability between different products.On the demand side,standardized technology allows consumers to connect with different products made by different manufacturers.On the supply side,standards enable products'R&D and manufacturing to be completed between many different vendors.In fact,these technical standards are patents of related companies,called standard essential patents(SEPs).After the standard essential patents' holding enterprises have market dominance,they have the motive of abusing the dominant position of the market.This paper studies the behavior of the standard essential patents'enterprises to discriminate pricing of downstream enterprises in the direction of the telecommunications industry.The Chinese economy has come to an important juncture that relies on the improvement of independent innovation capabilities of enterprises to promote economic restructuring and improve the quality of economic development.In today's world,countries are actively preparing for researching 5G technology,striving for the right to speak and take the initiative in the 5G era.Therefore,standard essential patents play an increasingly important role in the modern economy.In this context,the study of discriminatory licensing has important practical significance for the independent innovation of China's telecommunications enterprises.The main research methods of this paper focus on the combination of theoretical analysis and empirical analysis,and comprehensively uses methods such as constructing game model research,empirical quantitative research,and interdisciplinary comprehensive research,based on existing theories and case studies to study practical problems.In the theoretical analysis part of this paper,the Cournot competition model under the condition of heterogeneous products is constructed to analyze the behavioral incentives of the upstream standard essential patents holding companies and the impact on the downstream enterprises under the vertical market structure.The study found that upstream patent holders would impose discriminatory pricing on standard essential patents for downstream heterogeneous product manufacturers,i.e.,charge low-cost license fees to high-quality product manufacturers and relatively higher license fees to low-quality manufacturing companies.At the same time,it is found that discriminatory pricing will distort the innovation incentives of downstream enterprises,that is,discriminatory pricing has a hindrance effect on the innovation of low-quality product manufacturers and promotes the innovation of high-quality product manufacturers.The empirical analysis part of this paper takes the case of Huawei v.IDC in 2013 as the research object,and IDC's cancellation of discriminatory licensing fees for Huawei is regarded as a policy,with 30 listed communication companies and one unlisted enterprise Huawei's panel data.And the synthetic control model is constructed to study the influence mechanism of discriminatory pricing on Huawei's independent innovation.The empirical results show that after the discriminatory pricing is abolished,Huawei's independent R&D investment has increased significantly.Our analysis shows that the upstream patent monopoly enterprises will impair the innovation incentives of downstream enterprises for the discriminatory licenses of downstream enterprises.Therefore,in order to improve the:independent innovation consciousness of enterprises,it is necessary to fundamentally punish the violation of the FRAND principle.