On February 25, the news that “Meituan lost 1 million yuan in compensation for Ele.me” appeared on Weibo’s popular search. The Jinhua City Intermediate People’s Court of Zhejiang Province made a verdict regarding Zhejiang Jinhua Meituan asked merchants to enter into exclusive transactions with them.

The civil judgment issued by the Jinhua Intermediate People’s Court of Zhejiang Province showed that the unfair competition conducted by the Jinhua Branch of Beijing Sankuai Technology Co., Ltd. (the operating entity of Meituan) harmed the legitimate rights and interests of Shanghai Rajax Information Technology Co., Ltd., and shall bear civil liability. The court gave full support to Shanghai Rajax Information Technology Co., Ltd.'s request for Beijing Sankuai Technology Co., Ltd. to compensate one million yuan for economic losses.

In August 2020, China Judgments Online disclosed the first-instance civil ruling on Ele.me sued Meituan for commercial bribery and unfair competition disputes. Ele.me asked Meituan to immediately stop the infringement and compensate 1,000,000 yuan.

In the ruling, Ele.me said that some merchants reported that the Meituan takeaway platform had pushed some information that slandered Ele.me’s platform to merchants and forced merchants not to cooperate with Ele.me, but only exclusively with Meituan. Ele.me believes that Meituan’s move has disrupted the normal order of market competition, damaged the business reputation of Ele.me’s platform, and constituted unfair competition.

Ele.me and Meituan are both giants in the food delivery industry, and the competition between the two has been long. According to the judicial risk of Tianyancha, the two parties have already had a number of lawsuits based on unfair competition disputes.

On February 7, 2021, the Anti-Monopoly Guidelines of the Anti-Monopoly Commission of the State Council on the Platform Economy Field was issued. The "Guidelines" has made special provisions in response to issues such as "choose one" and "big data" that has been more reflected in various aspects of society in recent years, and clarify the criteria for determining whether relevant behavior constitutes a monopolistic behavior.