On December 25, 2024, the China’s Nationwide Individuals’s Congress (NPC) launched the draft Anti-Unfair Competitors Regulation (AUCL, 反不正当竞争法(修订草案)) for remark. From an IP perspective, the Draft updates Article 7 for newish know-how. Nevertheless, Synthetic Intelligence is neglected and may warrant a remark, e.g., to stop LLM hallucinations that trigger confusion as to a connection to others. The Draft additionally provides an extraterritorial Article 40 which may inadvertently snare international firms in edge instances.
The Draft additionally covers different areas of unfair competitors together with:
- Investigating each bribery and acceptance of bribes (Article 8);
- Operators shall not use knowledge, algorithms, know-how, platform guidelines, and so on. to have interaction in unfair competitors comparable to malicious transactions (Article 13);
- False promoting (Article 9), unfair gross sales with prizes (Article 11), industrial defamation (Article 12), and abuse of dominant place to wreck the reliable rights and pursuits of small and medium-sized enterprises (Article 15).
A translation of Article 7 and 40 comply with.
Article 7: Enterprise operators shall not interact within the following complicated conduct that will mislead folks into believing that their merchandise are these of others or that they’ve a selected reference to others:
(I) Unauthorized use of the identical or related logos as others’ product names, packaging, decorations, and so on. which have a sure affect;
(II) Unauthorized use of others’ enterprise names (together with abbreviations, enterprise names, and so on.), names of social organizations and non-legal organizations (together with abbreviations, and so on.), names (together with pen names, stage names, translated names, and so on.);
(III) Unauthorized use of the primary a part of a website identify, web site identify, net web page, new media account identify, utility identify or icon, and so on. that has a sure affect on others;
(IV) Unauthorized use of one other’s registered trademark or unregistered well-known trademark because the identify of the enterprise;
(V) Unauthorized use of one other’s influential product identify, enterprise identify (together with abbreviation, identify, and so on.) as its search key phrase;
(VI) Different complicated behaviors which can be ample to mislead folks into believing that it’s one other’s product or has a selected reference to one other.
Operators shall not help others to hold out complicated conduct.
Article 40: Unfair competitors actions stipulated on this Regulation which can be carried out outdoors the territory of the Individuals’s Republic of China and disrupt the home market competitors order or harm the reliable rights and pursuits of home operators shall be handled in accordance with the provisions of this Regulation and related legal guidelines.
Feedback are due January 23, 2025. The complete textual content and a comparability desk is on the market here (Chinese language solely). A translation of the present legislation from WIPO is on the market here.
