The General Administration of Market Supervision has passed and promulgated the Measures for the Administration of List of Serious Violations of Laws and Good Faith Principles (the Measures). From September 1, 2021, enterprises with bad behaviors such as infringing trade secrets and intentionally infringing intellectual property rights will be included in the list of enterprises with serious violations of laws and good faith principles.
Article 9 of the Measures shows that enterprises that commit inappropriate acts that undermine fair competition order and disrupt market order will be included in the list of serious violations of laws and good faith principles. The acts include but not limited to infringement of trade secrets, commercial slander, organization of false transactions and other unfair competition behaviors that seriously disrupt the fair competition order; intentional infringement of intellectual property rights; submitting abnormal patent applications or malicious trademark registration applications that harm the public interest; engaging in serious illegal patent or trademark work representation.
The Measures point out that nature of such acts, seriousness of circumstances, and harmfulness to the society, factors such as subjective intention, frequency and duration of the act, applicable punishment type and amount of fines, value of products, harmfulness to people's lives and health, property loss and social impact should be comprehensively considered when determine the punishment. If the parties have sufficient evidence to prove that they have no subjective intention, they will not be included in the list.
At the same time, the Measures also clarify the conditions and procedures for applying for early removal (credit reparation) in order to encourage parties who violated laws of good faith principles to take the initiative to correct mistakes and rebuild credits.
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