The recent implementation of the new Anti-Unfair Competition Law has reconciled its relationship with the Anti-Monopoly Law, enabling the two laws to perform their own functions. On one hand, the new Anti-Unfair Competition Law severed its provisions from those of the Anti-Monopoly Law by striking out four clauses that overlapped provisions of the Anti-Monopoly Law, including prohibitions against:

• anti-competitive activities by public companies,

• anti-competitive activities and restriction of competition through the abuse of administrative power,

• dumping; and

• tie-in sales.

On the other hand, the new Anti-Unfair Competition Law separates its scope from that of the Bid Invitation and Bidding Law by eliminating all clauses relating to bid invitations and bidding. Meanwhile, the new Anti-Unfair Competition Law optimized rules to identify unfair-competition acts as well as relevant liability to be imposed.

The new Anti-Unfair Competition Law reduces the number of unfair-competition acts from 11 to 7. These acts include counterfeiting and acts causing market confusion, commercial bribery, false advertising, infringement of commercial secrets, commercial defamation, improper prize-attached sales activities, and unfair competition on the Internet. Highlights of this revision include:

• Regulation of unfair competition acts by use of Internet technology that were added to Article 12;

• Article 25’s stipulation that where a business operator performs any act of unfair competition act in violation of the revised provisions, and if such operator proactively eliminates or mitigates the harmful consequence of its illegal act, it shall be subject to a lighter or mitigated administrative penalty

• If an illegal act is considered minor and is corrected in a timely manner without leading to any harmful consequences, it may be exempted from any administrative penalty.

 (Source: SOHU.com)