Recently, many domestic companies have complained to the China Mobile Alliance for Sharp's unreasonably high prices and abuse of lawsuits in patent licensing negotiations. The China Mobile has reported to the national regulatory agency that Sharp is suspected of abusing intellectual property rights to exclude and restrict competition.

In fact, China's mobile phone, home appliance, and panel industries are about to usher in a patent shock initiated by Sharp. After being acquired by Hon Hai, the Japanese electronics giant began to implement a radical patent strategy, and initiated a large number of patent infringement lawsuits against global household appliances, automobiles, mobile phones, and panel companies.

After being acquired by Hon Hai Technology Group in 2016, in order to quickly turn around the loss, Sharp began to lay off large numbers of people and cut prices and promote sales. As for the patent licensing strategy, Sharp also turned from the original gentle and pragmatic to the "big stick policy".

Sharp's patent stick was the first to reach Hisense with a five-year cooperation agreement. In July 2015, Sharp, which was in trouble, divested its assets, and Hisense acquired Sharp's Mexico plant and the "sharp" brand in North America for 5 years for US $ 23.7 million.

In 2017, Sharp, who unilaterally wanted to recover the right to use the brand in breach of contract, began to initiate intensive lawsuits against Hisense. This includes prosecuting Hisense for infringing its standard essential patents (SEP) for wireless communications and applying for Section 337 investigations, requiring ITC to issue an exclusion order and a prohibition order against Hisense. In addition, Sharp also put pressure on Hisense by cutting off the screen, and finally forced Hisense to sell the right to use the North American brand in 2019. During the pressure from Sharp, Hisense referred to this incident as a realistic version of "Farmer and Snake".

Later, due to the failure to achieve double revenue growth in 2018, Sharp again swept the patent stick to the automotive market and filed a complaint against the German automobile company Daimler in the courts of Mannheim and Munich between April and June 2019. Five patent infringements, accused Daimler of infringing its mobile communication standard essential patents, and applied to the court for an injunction. Before Sharp, Nokia also filed infringement lawsuits against Daimler for 10 essential patents for mobile communication standards. Both Nokia and Sharp are members of Avanci, the Internet of Things patent pool. After being sued, Daimler reported to the European Commission that Nokia had abused its dominant market position in intellectual property licensing. The European Commission has issued several rounds of antitrust questionnaires on Nokia's problems. At the same time, Daimler's main supplier Continental Group filed a FRAND lawsuit in the US court to sue Nokia and Avanci for abuse of intellectual property rights.

At present, in addition to European and American law enforcement agencies paying high attention to the antitrust issues caused by Avanci members, Japanese and South Korean regulators are also learning about the situation from their own industries. The famous patent information platform IAM said at the end of 2019 that "Asian automobile industry is preparing for the patent war" including BYD, Scattered Auto, Toyota, Huawei, Weilai and other companies. But concerns and complaints from industry have failed to stop Sharp's pace. In March 2020, the war spread to Tesla. Sharp sued Tesla in Japan for infringing its three LTE patents and applied for an injunction to the Tokyo District Court to prohibit the import of three Model cars.

In addition to cars, Sharp will naturally not miss the most important mobile phone market. From January 2020 to the present, Sharp has sued OPPO for infringing its WiFi and LTE related standard essential patents in Tokyo, Munich, Germany, Mannheim, Germany, and Taiwan District Courts, and applied for an injunction to the court. Subsequently, OPPO launched a counterattack. First, it filed a lawsuit against Sharp for infringing flash charging technology patents in a court in Tokyo, Japan, and second, it filed a lawsuit with Shenzhen ’s Intermediate People ’s Court for violations of the “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” obligations in the negotiation of standard essential patent licenses. And, as can be seen from OPPO's public response, Sharp asked OPPO for unreasonably high patent licensing fees and used litigation as a tool to use court injunctions as a threat of negotiation.

In fact, according to the number of 4G related essential patent declarations previously disclosed by ETSI, Sharp's contribution is not high, and standard essential patents account for about 2.2%. However, according to industry complaints, in addition to OPPO, Sharp also sought patent licenses from many domestic mobile phone manufacturers, including vivo, and requested that the licensing fee be several times its reasonable price. A related person introduced: "Sharp's asking price is too high, and it hasn't been long before it has started prosecution. It also applies for an injunction. It completely does not meet the Frand obligation of standard and essential patents, and it also constitutes an abuse of intellectual property rights."

In addition to the home appliance, automobile, and mobile phone markets, Sharp has also moved frequently in its strong panel field. In addition to seeking to license its intellectual property rights to multiple panel companies, Sharp also sued Xianyang Rainbow Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. and TPV Technology (Xiamen) Co., Ltd. in the Central District of California on March 10, 2020, infringing its LCD display related Patent, and launched a 337 investigation, requiring ITC to issue an exclusion order and a prohibition order against Rainbow Optoelectronics, TPV and some of its affiliates.

Sharp is launching a patent war across the net. Once any field is successful, Sharp, who has tasted the sweetness, will replicate this method throughout the industry, forcing companies to pay Sharp patent licensing fees by applying for injunctive relief. As the world's largest consumer market, Chinese companies must bear the brunt of being the victims.

However, it should be pointed out that, according to the Anti-Monopoly Committee ’s Anti-Monopoly Guidelines on Abuse of Intellectual Property (Draft for Comment), Sharp licensed intellectual property at an unfairly high price, and forced the licensee to accept the application for injunctive relief from standard essential patents Unfair and high-priced license fees have constituted an abuse of intellectual property rights to exclude or restrict competition, in violation of China's Anti-Monopoly Law.

Earlier, the China Mobile Alliance reported to Qualcomm and Ericsson that they abused their intellectual property rights. Currently, Qualcomm has been fined and rectified, and the Ericsson case has also been investigated. At the same time, during the continued unreasonable price increase of DRAM, the China Mobile Alliance also reported the monopoly of Samsung, Micron and Hynix on behalf of the industry. The case is currently under investigation.

In recent years, China ’s anti-monopoly law enforcement has frequently sharpened the monopoly of high-tech industries. When the abuse of market dominance restricts the healthy and orderly development of the industry and harms the interests of Chinese enterprises and consumers, the “Anti-Monopoly Law” has become a maintenance competition. The fair blade of order.