Top court releases nine unfair competition cases

China's top court released nine significant cases related to unfair competition on Wednesday, focusing on emerging and crucial sectors such as artificial intelligence, new energy and the platform economy.

By disclosing and analyzing these cases, the Supreme People's Court has underscored the crucial role of the judiciary in fostering a well-regulated market with healthy competition and combating unfair practices, including counterfeiting, conduct that causes confusion, misappropriation of trade secrets, commercial defamation and false advertising.

The SPC has mandated judges to continually strengthen regulation of actions that violate the principle of good faith and significantly harm the legitimate rights and interests of businesses and consumers, such as free-riding on commercial identifiers, counterfeiting and trade secret theft. It has also encouraged courts nationwide to apply punitive damages when evidence is sufficient, aiming to effectively deter intentional infringements.

Chinese courts have been urged to focus more on curbing harmful competitive practices such as false advertising and commercial defamation, ensuring that judicial efforts promote the high-quality development of key sectors, including the platform economy and the new energy industry.

For example, in one highlighted case, a grassroots court clarified that operators of livestream e-commerce who publish doctored videos of competitors' sales, altered through technical means, and fabricate promotional relationships to mislead consumers are engaging in false advertising. The SPC said the decision aims to guide the livestream e-commerce industry toward orderly competition.

Furthermore, with the emergence of new types of harmful unfair competition in the digital economy and AI development, the SPC emphasized that courts should balance regulation and development, as well as technological empowerment and protection of the public interest. Courts are advised to apply the general clause and catch-all provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law cautiously, to steer technological innovation toward positive and beneficial outcomes.