Judicial Practice and Reflection on Data Unfair Competition Disputes

The unclarity of data attributes and utilization rules in the current law makes the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China play a mainstay role in the adjudication of data dispute cases between equal market subjects, and pushes the rules created in practice further refined in the Regulations on the Prohibition of Online Unfair Competition Acts (Draft for Comments) and the Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft for Comments). Although the existing judicial practice has made some exploration on protecting the rights and interests of enterprise data and promoting the flow of public data, it should further combine the characteristics and benefits of data, which is, it not only fully protect the legitimate rights and interests of data controllers, but also promote the orderly flow of data. In data competition disputes, the judiciary should transform from the right infringement judgment paradigm to the behavior legitimacy judgment paradigm, pay attention to the consumer welfare and technological innovation behind the case, and actively explore the applicable data portability, so as to actively guide the judiciary to form a fair and orderly data industry standard.