Li Zhu Insight Included in CDR Magazine Article on China’s Revised Anti-Unfair Competition Law
Li Zhu, a Quarles & Brady Intellectual Property partner in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office, shared her perspective on China’s updated Anti-Unfair Competition Law (AUCL) in a Commercial Dispute Resolution (CDR) Magazine article.
The AUCL was first enacted in 1993, and a revised version of the law, which was passed last month, will take effect in October. Zhu explained the important role AUCL has played in modernizing China’s economy and some of the key areas the new version of the law addresses.
An excerpt:
Quarles & Brady’s Li Zhu, a Washington, DC-based US and China dual-qualified brand protection and anti-counterfeiting partner, calls the AUCL “a foundational step in the development of China’s modern market economy”, on account of its regulation of an array of undesirable commercial conduct over the years, such as intellectual property (IP) infringement via passing off, breach of trade secrets and domain name misuse, as well as commercial bribery in the 2017 update, and it was a main weapon against anti-competitive and monopolistic practices before the 2008 AML was enacted. “It has long been more than just an IP enforcement mechanism; [rather] it is a core compliance statute for all business entities operating in China.”
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The five-chapter, 41-article AUCL 2025 covers general provisions, unfairly competitive conduct, investigation of suspected unfairly competitive conduct, legal liability and supplementary provisions.
“The new law expands the scope of […] confusion to cover not only traditional commercial identifiers such as trade marks or trade dress, but also use of another’s brand or trade name in search engine keywords, app icons, social media handles or other digital identifiers, and situations where platform operators facilitate or fail to prevent such confusion,” Quarles & Brady’s Zhu points out.