On June 27, 2025, the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China enacted amendments to the PRC Anti-Unfair Competition Law (the “2025 Amendment”). The revised law will enter into effect on October 15, 2025.

While the new law introduces a number of changes impacting a wide range of activity – including data protection and online trade – the amendments of concern to owners of trademarks relate to platform liability, passing off, and long-arm jurisdiction.

Online Platform Responsibility for Handling Complaints Alleging Unfair Competition

Under existing practice – in China as well as other countries – online trade platforms will typically refuse to take down online ads based upon notices by IP owners unless involves a clear violation of a registered trademark, a locally-issued patent or a work protected by copyright. As a result, IP owners seeking protection for rights under the AUCL – including particularly unregistered trademarks and trade dress – have been forced to first seek binding decisions from the courts or administrative enforcement authorities (the Market Supervision Bureaux or “MSBs”), after which platforms may take down offending ads based upon their decisions.

Article 21 of the 2025 Amendment seeks to address this gap in legislation by explicitly requiring the platforms to treat acts of unfair competition in a manner similar to that for registered IP rights. 

Overall, the insertion of Article 21 suggests an intent not only to codify judicial practice, i.e., court decisions imposing civil liability on platforms for failing to intervene in disputes involving obvious unfair competition, but also to facilitate intervention by local MSBs in future cases.

Article 21 imposes the following specific obligations on platforms:

• First, they are required to clarify in their user agreements and rules and procedures that acts of unfair competition will not be tolerated, and they must establish a mechanism for handling relevant reports, complaints, and disputes.

• Second, where the platform determines that acts of unfair competition occur, they are required to “take necessary measures” (presumably through take-downs), preserve relevant transactional records, and report to the matter to the local MSB in accordance with law.

Unfair competition involving unregistered trademarks and trade dress can of course pose complicated questions of fact and law, and it is therefore quite possible that Chinese platforms will continue to resist take-downs in all but the clearest cases. 

Notably, the revised AUCL does not provide for administrative penalties against online platforms that fail to fulfil their duties under Article 21. However, platforms have typically been respectful of MSBs when they offer informal guidance in novel circumstances. And while full-blown civil actions against platforms are still unusual in China, they are remain possible the general provisions of Article 22(1) of the AUCL.

Broadening of Actionable Behavior for Passing Off

Article 6 of the existing AUCL prohibits the use of indicators that may result in consumer confusion, including (but not limited to) product names, packaging designs, decoration, company names, personal names, domain names, website names, and webpages, provided they are confirmed to be “influential”, i.e., sufficiently famous.

Article 7 of the revised law widens the scope of subject matter that is explicitly protected under the earlier Article 6 to include internet aliases, social account names, app names and icons. In doing so, the law (again) codifies existing judicial practice.

Article 7 also explicitly provides that the unauthorized use of another’s trademarks, product names, company names as keywords in search engine advertising constitutes unfair competition where such use may cause confusion. Notably, this provision does not require that the complainant’s mark be “influential” (i.e., famous).  

The revised law still leaves uncertainty as to whether the “hidden” use of brands and other identifiers as keywords for web searches constitutes unfair competition (i.e., using trademarks and identifiers as keywords for searching, but with the identifier itself not appearing in the commissioning party’s own website).    

App Icons

Chinese courts have in the past protected app icons under the category of product “decoration”, but limited such protection to cases where the brand owner has proved it has used the icon separately, and not in conjunction with the name of the app itself. (See Beijing Xinyang Technology Co., Ltd. v Beijing Gengmei Interactive Info Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing IP Court (2021) Jing 73 Min Zhong No. 2349).

It remains unclear whether courts will continue to follow earlier judicial cases in this regard or widen protection under the new law to include app icons that are deemed “influential”, but are only used together with the app name. 

Keywords

The Chinese courts have been inconsistent in their handling of cases where trademarks and other identifiers are used without authorization as keywords in web searches. Certain courts have held that the use of such keywords is acceptable, provided the identifier does not appear in the commissioning party’s own website (i.e. “hidden use”), while other courts – including the Supreme People’s Court in a non-binding decision – have held that such use violates the general prohibition against “dishonest behavior” under Article 2 of the AUCL.

Despite the language of the revised law, it remains to be seen how courts will implement the new provisions on keywords.  But it is in any case likely that courts will require relatively strong evidence of actual or likelihood of confusion.

It likewise remains unclear whether local MSBs will feel comfortable accepting administrative complaints involving keywords until judicial practice becomes more settled.

Long-arm Jurisdiction – New Weapon against Bad Faith Filers Based Overseas?

Reflecting trends in other recent Chinese legislation, Article 40 of the 2025 Amendment allows for enforcement against parties engaged in unfair competition occurring outside of China that subsequently results in disruption of market competition or otherwise infringes upon the rights of businesses or consumers within China.

Despite requests from international IP associations, the new law does not explicitly recognize bad faith filing of trademarks and other IP rights as a form of unfair competition. However, the new long-arm provisions of the law could provide a stronger basis for seeking relief within China against registry pirates, including those that file for trademarks in the PRC in clear bad faith, and with the applicant being an individual or company registered outside mainland China,  as well as parties that file for marks outside of China and use their foreign registrations to support illegal schemes within the PRC, e.g., using a foreign trademark registration to mislead Chinese consumers into thinking there is a connection with the victim brand owner.

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