Amendment to the Anti-Unfair Competition Law after a 24-Year Interval
Recently the Anti-Unfair Competition Law (Draft Amendment) was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress for deliberation. The Draft Amendment incorporates the following material revisions:
It proposes a stipulation that forcing users to uninstall legitimate networking products is illegal.
New provisions were included to regulate unfair competition on the Internet. Specifically, operators must not restrict users’ choices or disturb the normal operations of other Internet users through technical means such as inserting links in networking products or services legitimately provided by other operators for the purpose of automatic redirects, or maliciously causing incompatibility among networking products or services that were legitimately provided by other operators.
Post-resignation disclosure of trade secrets by employees will be subject to penalties.
In order to strengthen the protection of trade secrets, new provisions were incorporated dealing with trade secret infringement by employees or former employees of trade secret owners, and to the confidentiality obligations imposed on professionals such as staff members of government agencies, attorneys at law and certified public accountants, etc. with respect to trade secrets acquired in the course of the performance of their duties.
The use of unregistered well-known trademarks will also be subject to penalties.
A new provision stipulates that the use of another party’s registered trademark or unregistered well-known trademark in one’s own enterprise name in a manner that misleads the public constitutes unfair competition.
Parties committing unfair competition will be subject to penalties against their good-faith record.
Where an operator is subject to civil liability for damages and fines, yet its assets are insufficient for full payment, civil damages compensation will take first priority. In view of the special and significant role played by reputtion in market competition, the Draft Amendment incorporates new provisions on penalties by good-faith record against violators.
Excerpted from the official website of Xinhua News Agency (www.xinhuanet.com)