Asia: Antitrust/Competition Law

Minister of Trade Regulation No. 37 of 2025 ("MOT Reg. 37/2025") introduces amendments to Minister of Trade Regulation No. 16 of 2025 and sets out updated policies and arrangements governing imports into Indonesia.

New laws make significant changes to the rules governing the new Australian mandatory & suspensory merger control regime, which comes into force on 1 January 2026.

Merger Control Comparative Guide for the jurisdiction of India, check out our comparative guides section to compare across multiple countries

Competition law in India starts with a simple idea: free, fair markets work better for everyone. They push companies to be efficient, help consumers, and keep innovation alive.

Competition law, or antitrust law, is at the heart of any modern market economy: it ensures that markets work without their beneficial workings being compromised by monopoly power, cartelization, or exclusionary practices.

Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Gina Cass-Gottlieb has announced the ACCC's compliance and enforcement priorities for 2026–27.

China's utility model patent system has propelled the nation to account for 96.7% of global filings in 2024, with 3.2 million applications compared to negligible numbers in Europe and none in the United States. This institutional innovation, designed specifically for incremental innovations and product improvements, has become a cornerstone of China's manufacturing transformation and technological advancement.

India's merger control regime provides a mandatory and suspensory mechanism whereby the parties to a notifiable M&A transaction (i.e., the combination) are mandatorily required to file a notification to the Competition Commission of India ("CCI") for its prior approval and are restricted from consummating the transaction in the absence of the said approval.

Australia's new mandatory merger control regime has completed its first three months of operation, revealing both promising trends and emerging challenges for dealmakers.