Case 1

A Shenzhen city-based art publishing and dealing group published text and 3,700 or so images about the artworks on the catalog to be sold at 16 forthcoming auctions on the website it hosted. A Beijing-based tech company copied the text and images and republished them on its own website without the art group’s authorization. The art group sued the tech company for its unfair competition practices, seeking 2 million yuan ($315,000) in damages and 112,268 yuan ($1,800) in reasonable expenses. The defendant argued that the text and images were uploaded by a certain user of its website as user-generated content and the plaintiff didn’t have the copyright to the text and images attributable to the entities owning these artworks for auctions.

The court held that the defendant’s scraping of the plaintiff’s information had substantially prejudiced the plaintiff’s commercial resources and competitive advantages and its unauthorized use of the information on its website was likely to cause consumer confusion over the false affiliation between the two websites. The court ruled the defendant’s free-riding on the plaintiff’s reputation constituted unfair competition and awarded the plaintiff 1 million yuan ($160,000) in damages and 112,268 yuan ($1,800) in reasonable expenses.

The defendant appealed the case and the appellate court upheld the lower court ruling.

The case docket no. is （2020）京民申5809号, whose English transliteration is 5809, petition (申), civil case (民), (2020) Beijing High People’s Court (（2020）京).

Case 2

A Beijing-based video hosting platform was one of the Chinese licensed broadcasters of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. It placed an advertisement about the event on a third-party website, which allowed deep linking to redirect to the video hosting platform. A Beijing-based tech company, as another advertiser on the said website, devised a URL scheme to redirect users of the third-party website to a sports application it developed with their clicks on the platform’s advertisement. The platform sued the tech company for its unfair competition practices, seeking 2.8 million yuan ($440,000) in damages and 200,000 yuan ($3,150) in reasonable expenses.

The court held the internet traffic the plaintiff intended to drive by paying the third-party website was hijacked by the defendant, resulting in its unrealized economic gains due to the misused advertising expenditure. The court ruled the defendant’s free-riding on the plaintiff’s reputation constituted unfair competition and awarded the plaintiff 700,000 yuan ($110,000) in damages and 100,000 yuan ($1,600) in reasonable expenses.

The defendant appealed the case and the appellate court upheld the lower court ruling.

The case docket no. is 案号（2018）京0105民初68538号, whose English transliteration is 68538, first instance (初), civil case (民), (2018) Chaoyang District People’s Court of Beijing city (（2018）京0105).

Case 3

A Shanghai-based internet security company developed and operated an anti-virus software program. A Beijing-based tech company and a Beijing-based internet security company developed and operated a software program of this kind as well. With the latter software program installed on a computer, the computer owner would be advised about the unnecessity, negative impacts, and potential risks pertaining to the installment as long as the owner was to install the former one. The computer owners were thus likely to give up installing the former program. The Shanghai-based company sued the two Beijing-based companies for their unfair competition practices, seeking 5 million yuan ($790,000) in damages and 120,000 yuan ($1,900) in reasonable expenses.

The court held the computer owners would be easily impacted by the wording and highly suggestive color choice of the allegedly infringing program’s warnings triggered by the installment of the plaintiff’s program. The court also held that the defendants harmed the plaintiff’s goodwill and their deprivation of any alternative button enabling the competing program’s installment encroached on the customers’ rights to be informed and choose. The court ruled the defendants’ practices constituted unfair competition and awarded the plaintiff 200,000 yuan ($31,000) in damages and 50,000 yuan ($7,900) in reasonable expenses.

The defendant appealed the case and the appellate court upheld the lower court ruling.

The case docket no. is 案号（2019）京0105民初51558号, whose English transliteration is 51558, first instance (初), civil case (民), (2019) Chaoyang District People’s Court of Beijing city (（2019）京0105).