On 4 Aug. 2022, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorates (SPP) released six typical cases involving distortion of the market order, exemplifying how Chinese procuratorates have endeavoured to maintain the market competition order.
In China, procuratorates act as public prosecutors in criminal cases. For more information on their functions, please read our previous post, “Don’t Forget the People’s Procuratorate When Resorting to China’s Judicial System.”
According to the PRC Criminal Law, “distortion of the market order” includes counterfeiting registered trademarks of others, collusive bidding, infringing trade secrets, false advertising, damaging commercial and commodity reputations of competitors, etc.
The six typical cases released this time involve price manipulation, counterfeiting registered trademarks of others, and damaging commercial and commodity reputations of competitors.
For example, in the case that Company X (an Internet technology company in Nantong, Jiangsu Province) and its legal representative Mr. Wan sabotaging the computer system, the procuratorate confirmed that the defendants had used DDoS to attack the servers of their competitor, thereby destroying the competitor’s network services. These acts constituted unfair competition in the civil action, and the crime of destroying the computer information system as well as the crime of sabotaging production and operation in the criminal action.
Cover Photo by Bournes senruoB on Unsplash
Contributors: CJO Staff Contributors Team
