On January 8th, 2018, Guangdong Pisen Electronics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter“Pisen”) filed complaints with the Anti-Monopoly and Anti-Unfair Competition Enforcement Bureau of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce and the Price Supervision and Inspection and Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, alleging that Apple Inc. and its affiliates Apple Computer Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and Apple Electronic Products Commercial and Trading (Beijing) Co., Ltd. violated the P.R.C. Anti-Monopoly Law.

Pisen alleged that during the MFi certification process, Apple Inc. committed the following monopolistic acts: (i) it charged MFi and related certification fees and withdrew a percentage of the money from sales revenue for the chips and data cables; (ii) it set terms on the unilateral cancellation of the MFi certification; (iii) it required data cable manufacturers with MFi certification to purchase chips and connectors only from its designated manufacturers; and (iv) it refused to grant Pisen MFi certification without due cause by exploiting ambiguities in the MFi certification standards.

“According to the P.R.C. Anti-Monopoly Law, operators with a dominant market position are prohibited from selling products at unfairly high prices, purchasing products at unfairly low prices or requiring without due cause a trading counterparty to trade only with it or its designated operators,” said Mr. Liwei Jiang, Pisen’s attorney, “Moreover, Apple Inc.’s fixing of the sales price of its chips is a form of vertical monopoly agreement prohibited by the P.R.C. Anti-Monopoly Law, which states that ‘an operator and a trading counterparty may not fix the resale price of a product to third parties’.”

(Source: Legal Weekly)