Research on the dilemma and improvement of legal regulation for unfair competition related to corporate data in China

Abstract

Corporate data disputes have been rising rapidly in recent years in China. Courts typically apply the trade secret clause, the Internet clause, and the general clause under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of PRC to the disputes. However, there are some limitations and problems, including the limited scope of the trade secret clause, the difficulty in interpretation of the Internet clause, and short of sufficient demonstration of the general clause, all leading to the lack of clear rules and guidelines for solving corporate data competition issue. The property nature of corporate data and the business operators’ factual control of the data necessarily require standard legal protection. Corporate data is not the property right, but the property interest protected under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. For further legal positioning of the corporate data, the paper refers to the trade secret clause’s legislative principles. The paper also learns from the United States and Japan that both information misappropriation rule and newly established ‘shared data with limited access’ provision protect corporate data under their anti-unfair competition law. The paper concludes by providing judicial and legislative suggestions to pave the way for corporate data protection in China. At the judicial level, Chinese courts should clarify the specific application conditions of the general clause. At the legislative level, enacting new legislation ‘data clause’ into the Anti-Unfair Competition Law is necessary to regulate unfair competition behaviors related to corporate data.