On June 27, 2025, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) passed the newly amended Anti-Unfair Competition Law (中华人民共和国反不正当竞争法). The amended Anti-Unfair Competition Law (AUCL) will be effective October 15, 2025. While China is not a common law country, Article 7 of the AUCL nonetheless provides common law-like protection for unregistered marks that have a “certain influence.” Article 7 is updated to prohibit the use of others’ trademarks as business names or search keywords. However, this revision does not address much needed …
Category: Unfair Competition
China’s Supreme People’s Court Releases Typical Intellectual Property Cases in People’s Courts of 2024
On April 21, 2025, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) the Typical Intellectual Property Cases in People’s Courts of 2024 (2024年人民法院知识产权典型案例). This year’s annual release includes only 8 cases and includes trade secret theft, an IP ownership dispute, copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and unfair competition. No patent infringement cases made the list this year. Typical cases are used by the SPC to promote uniformity to help ensure similar cases are treated consistently across different courts.
Beijing Intellectual Property Court: Artificial Intelligence Models Can Be Protected with the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, Not the Copyright Law
In what is believed to be a case of first impression in China, on March 31, 2025, the Beijing IP Court, on appeal, ruled that Douyin (TikTok) was entitled to protection of its artificial intelligence (AI) transformation model under Article 2 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law but not under Copyright Law. Specifically, the Beijing IP Court upheld the original judgement against the defendant/appellant Yiruike Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (亿睿科信息技术（北京）有限公司) for violating Douyin’s competitive interest in its transformation model with the …
Guangdong Higher People’s Court: 107 Million RMB Settlement in Pokémon Copyright and Unfair Competition Case
On February 21, 2025, Guangdong’s Higher People’s Court announced a settlement of 107 million RMB in favor of The Pokémon Company for copyright infringement and unfair competition. Pokémon had sued Guangzhou Mai Network Technology Co., Ltd., Huo Network Technology Co., Ltd. and others for copyright infringement and unfair competition disputes over the game “Pokémon: Remastered” in December 2021. Pokémon requested 500 million RMB and was awarded 107 million RMB in the first instance at the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court. The Guangdong High …