By Albert Chen

Recently, as researched by Beijing No.2 Intermediate People’s Court (note: the link is in Chinese), the judicial protection of Online Intellectual Property Rights in China has not kept pace with the development of Internet technology and online services in the country. Among these protections, it has been found that the Anti Unfair Competition Law has not sufficiently covered all situations in which unfair competitive behavior is an issue. Specifically, it has been found that provisions of the Anti Unfair Competition Act cover only about fifty percent of cases involving Online Unfair Competition. As for the remaining cases, they can only be governed by the principles outlined in Article 2 of the Anti Unfair Competition Law , providing that “[. . .]an operator shall, in market transactions, abide by principles of voluntariness, equality, fairness, honesty and credibility, and observe generally recognized business ethics.” In today’s post, we would like to share our analysis on the Chinese Anti Unfair Competition Law, and to discuss each situation as can be seen under the current law.