The top 10 typical cases of Internet unfair competition were released, and lu jin's lawsuit against plug-in software operating companies was selected as an outsider

Reporter 丨 Zhang Xiaoyun

On July 17, under the guidance of the Intellectual Property Trial Division of the Shanghai Higher People's Court, the Shanghai Pudong Court released 10 typical cases of unfair competition on the Internet, involving Alipay, Tencent, Lujinsuo, 2345, Kingsoft Drug Bully, Dianping, "TV Cat", Youku, "Douyu.com", Baidu, Taobao and many other well-known Internet companies and platforms.

Among them, the unfair competition dispute case of Lujin's financial service platform was selected, which was determined to be unfair competition in the online rush to buy services. Lu Jin found that the plug-in software snapped up wealth management products and sued, and the operating company was sentenced to 500,000 yuan in compensation.

This case was rated as one of the 50 typical intellectual property cases of Chinese courts in 2020 and the top ten cases of judicial protection of intellectual property rights in Shanghai courts in 2020, and the judgment was rated as one of the top ten outstanding judgment documents of Shanghai courts in 2020.

In recent years, the technology finance industry has continued to develop, and the science and technology financial products launched through the network platform are widely welcomed by users, but at the same time, various types of online rush services have been spawned. As a market competition behavior implemented by business operators, how to evaluate and regulate the online rush service through the Anti-Unfair Competition Law is not only related to the protection of the competitive interests of science and technology financial enterprises and the protection of the interests of investment users and consumers, but also of great significance to maintaining the business environment of financial platforms. Where the online snapping service involved in the case uses technical means to provide users of the target platform with an unfair advantage in snapping up, undermines the existing squatting rules of the target platform and deliberately bypasses its regulatory measures, causing serious damage to the user stickiness and business environment of the target platform, it shall be found to constitute unfair competition.

One of the plaintiffs in this case is Shanghai Lujiazui International Financial Assets Exchange Market Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Lujinsuo Company), which is a well-known Internet wealth management platform, and the other plaintiff, Shanghai Lujinsuo Internet Financial Information Service Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Lujin Service Company), is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shanghai Lujiazui International Financial Assets Exchange Market Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Lujin Service Company).

Both plaintiffs have set up financial services websites and mobile applications, and the transaction of debt transfer products is one of the popular services. In order to snap up the debt transfer products, the members of the two plaintiffs need to log on to the above-mentioned websites or mobile applications frequently and frequently refresh the information of the debt transfer products.

The defendant, Xi'an LuzhiTou Software Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as LuzhiTou Company), was the provider of the "Lujin Purchasing Tool" software, and the user installed and operated the software without paying attention to the information on the debt transfer product released by the two plaintiffs' platforms to automatically snap up according to the preset conditions, and completed the transaction before the member who manually snapped it up.

The two plaintiffs argued that the acts of unfair competition carried out by Lu Zhi Investment Company damaged the competitive advantage accumulated by the two plaintiffs through years of operation, resulting in the loss of members of the two plaintiffs, the decline in product attention, and the damage to goodwill, which caused greater losses to the two plaintiffs.

Accordingly, the two plaintiffs asked the court to order the defendant to stop the unfair competition involved in the case, eliminate the impact and compensate the plaintiff for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 500,000 yuan.

The defendant argued that there was no competition between the plaintiff and the defendant, and that the core of the rush purchase service provided by the defendant was to make it more convenient to purchase the debt transfer products of the two plaintiffs' platforms under the premise of user authorization. The rush purchase service neither prevents users from normally logging on to the two plaintiffs' platforms for transactions, nor does it affect the normal purchase behavior of other registered users of the two plaintiffs' platforms. Therefore, it is requested that all the claims of the two plaintiffs be dismissed.

After trial, the Shanghai Pudong Court held that business operators providing online rush purchase services should comply with the provisions of Article 12 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, and must not use technical means to obstruct or disrupt the normal operation of network products or services lawfully provided by other business operators by influencing user choices or other means. When the online rush service does not belong to the type of conduct clearly listed in the anti-french Internet article and the underlying clause is applied, in addition to considering whether it causes damage to the target platform and users of the rush service, it should also be examined whether it is improper.

The Shanghai Pudong court held that the defendant's act of providing snapped up services by operating software caused serious damage to the plaintiff. The first is the reduction of platform traffic benefits. The rush service led to a decrease in the frequency of users' access to the platforms of the two plaintiffs, which objectively reduced the display opportunities of other financial products of the two plaintiffs. The second is the deprivation of potential trading opportunities for users. The rush service changed the distribution of the benefits of the debt transfer product among the users of the two plaintiffs' platforms, resulting in a large number of user opportunities and benefits. The third is the destruction of the platform business environment. The snap-up service will impact the investor confidence that the two plaintiffs' platforms rely on most, resulting in a reduction in user stickiness and the flow of investors and capital to other investment channels.

At the same time, the rush to buy services involved in the case is obviously improper. On the one hand, the subversion of the rules of the two plaintiffs' platforms by the rush service undermines the fair basis for product rush purchase. The success rate of snapping up the success rate as a whole is seriously inclined to users who use the snap-up service, and the basis for fair competition among users is lost. On the other hand, the rush to buy the service involved in the case deliberately circumvented the regulatory mechanism of the two plaintiffs, reflecting the subjective intention of the defendants in the act.

Therefore, the rush-to-buy service provided by the defendant used technical means to obstruct the normal development of the business of the two plaintiffs' debt transfer products by providing the two plaintiffs' platform users with an improper rush-to-buy advantage, causing damage to the overall interests of the two plaintiffs and the platform users, improperly destroying the business environment for fair competition between the two plaintiffs' platforms, and constituting unfair competition, which should be given a negative evaluation in the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. Therefore, the Shanghai Pudong Court ordered the defendants to stop the acts of unfair competition involved in the case, publicly eliminate the impact, and compensate the two plaintiffs for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling RMB500,000.

It is understood that after the judgment of the case was pronounced, the plaintiff sent a letter of thanks and a pennant, and the defendant also expressed his acceptance of the judgment and took the initiative to perform the content determined by the effective judgment.