On December 21, 2024, the Draft Amendment to Anti-Unfair Competition Law (Draft Amendment) was submitted to the 13th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th NPC for review.

The Draft Amendment mainly revised the following contents: clarified the overall requirements for countering unfair competition, improved the description of departmental responsibilities, justified that the administrative departments of the above county-level people’s government shall bear the duty of investigate and sanction over combating unfair competition, while follow the designated provisions where laws and administrative regulations provide that other departments shall take the responsibility hereof.

To improve provisions on conducts regarding unfair competition. The Draft Amendment improved the confusion of regulation by providing that business operators shall not deploy the names of new media accounts, application names or icons of others with a certain degree of influence without authorization, or set the names of other people's influential goods or enterprises as their search keywords without authorization, which caused confusion; Business operators must also not facilitate the confusion conduct taken by others.

To strengthen the governance of commercial bribery, adhere to the principle of "investigating bribing and accepting bribery together", and add provisions on units and individuals not accepting bribes in transaction activities on the basis of the existing provisions.

To improve the regulatory system for online unfair competition, stipulating that platform operators shall clarify the rules of fair competition within the platform in the platform service agreements and transaction rules in accordance with law, and shall promptly take necessary measures to stop the unfair competition conduct of the platform operators. Operators ought not to use data, algorithms, technology, platform rules, and so-forth to carry out malicious transactions or other unfair competition misconducts. Meanwhile, the revised Draft Amendment also improved the relevant provisions on false publicity, improper premium sales, commercial defamation, and abuse of dominant position to harm the legitimate rights and interests of small and medium-sized enterprises.

To improve the regulations and penalties for anti-unfair competition conducts. The Draft Amendment enriched regulatory measures and scientifically adjusted the amount of penalties in accordance with the principle of equalizing penalties and combining penalties with education as stipulated in the Administrative Penalties Law. If an operator is suspected of violating the provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, the supervisory and investigate departments may inquire its legal representative or person in charge and require to take measures to rectify the situation in a timely manner. Increase penalties for unfair competition. Provisions have been added to penalize legal representatives, personnel in charge and personnel directly responsible for operators who commit commercial bribery; and to supplement the relevant penalties for units and individuals who accept bribes in business.

(Source: China Daily)