According to CCTV news, in May this year, the General Administration of Market Supervision opened an investigation into the suspected monopolistic behavior of Zhiwang in accordance with the Anti-Monopoly Law.
It was found that Zhiwang has a dominant position in the Chinese academic literature network database service market in China.
Since 2014, Zhiwang has abused this dominant position to carry out monopolistic acts.
The investigation shows that the implementation of unfairly high prices and limited trading practices by Zhiwang has excluded and restricted competition in the market of Chinese academic literature network database services.
It infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of users.
It affects the development of innovation and dissemination of academic exchanges in the relevant market.
This constitutes an abuse of a dominant position as prohibited by Article 22(1)(a) and (4) of the Anti-monopoly Law, namely “selling goods at unfairly high prices” and “restricting the counterparty to trade with it only without justifiable reasons”.
According to Articles 57 and 59 of the Antimonopoly Law, on December 26, 2022, the General Administration of Market Supervision made an administrative penalty decision in accordance with the law.
ordering Zhiwang to stop the illegal acts.
It also imposed a fine of 5% of its sales in China of $1.752 billion in 2021, totaling $87.6 million.
Zhiwang responded that since May 13, when the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration opened an investigation into the alleged monopoly of Zhiwang, Zhiwang has cooperated fully, reflected deeply, and conducted a comprehensive self-examination.
In response to this punishment, Zhiwang sincerely accepts and firmly obeys.
Zhiwang also announced a total of 15 corrective measures in 5 areas.
- Overhaul the exclusive cooperation with journals and universities
- Promote industry non-exclusive cooperation model.
- Release exclusive cooperation agreements.
- Significantly reduce the price of database services
- Reduce the sales price.
- Improve the pricing mechanism.
- Correct unreasonable sales patterns.
- Establish a price communication mechanism.
- Expand free service items.
- Strengthen the public welfare attributes of the platform.
- Protecting the legal rights of authors
- Obtain authorization from copyright owners in accordance with the law.
- Improve the method of payment for manuscripts.
- Improve the author service mechanism.
- Continuous optimization of related services
- Open personal paper checking service.
- Improve the technical level of academic misconduct detection.
- Comprehensively strengthen compliance building
- Improve the compliance management system.
- Strengthen compliance risk management. (CCTV News)
