On June 27, 2025, the 16th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress voted to pass the newly revised Anti Unfair Competition Law, which will officially come into effect on October 15, 2025. As an important milestone in the construction of the rule of law in China's market economy, this revision increases the number of legal provisions from 33 to 41, directly facing the new competitive contradictions in the development of the digital economy and building a more rigorous legal barrier for the protection of enterprise intellectual property rights.

Against the backdrop of intensified competition within platforms and frequent data rights disputes, the new law not only strengthens the regulation of traditional confusion behavior, but also innovatively incorporates digital competition rules such as data rights protection and platform governance. Based on the interpretation of the main highlights of this revision, the author analyzes the potential impact of the new law on the protection of intellectual property rights for enterprises after it comes into effect.

1、 Interpretation of Main Highlights

（1） Improve the regulations on traditional unfair competition practices

1. Improve the regulations on confusing unfair competition behaviors

Improving the regulations on confusing unfair competition behaviors is a major content of the newly revised Anti Unfair Competition Law. The new law has made two important revisions in Article 7:

(1) The third item of the first paragraph of Article 7 of the new law adds "new media account name, application name or icon, etc.". This amendment includes emerging assets within the scope of legal protection and clarifies the unauthorized use of "new media account names, application names, or icons" that have a certain impact on others as confusing behavior.

(2) Add the second paragraph of Article 7, which reads: "Unauthorized use of someone else's registered trademark or unregistered well-known trademark as a trade name in an enterprise name, or setting someone else's product name, enterprise name (including abbreviations, trade names, etc.), registered trademark, unregistered well-known trademark, etc. as search keywords, leading people to mistakenly believe that it is someone else's product or has a specific connection with others, constitutes confusion as stipulated in the preceding paragraph." This amendment aims to regulate the issue of "keyword use" in e-commerce bidding ranking advertisements in practice, stipulating that setting someone else's product name, enterprise name (including abbreviations, trade names, etc.), registered trademark, unregistered well-known trademark, etc. as search keywords, leading people to mistakenly believe that it is someone else's product or has a specific connection with others, constitutes confusion. Behavior.

2. Improve regulations on unfair competition practices such as commercial bribery, false advertising, and commercial defamation

(1) The second paragraph has been added to Article 8 of the new law, which states that "the units and individuals specified in the preceding paragraph shall not accept bribes". This amendment aims to improve the legal basis for punishing units and individuals who accept bribes in accordance with the Anti Unfair Competition Law.

(2) The first paragraph of Article 9 of the new law adds "other operators" as victims of false advertising, and the second paragraph adds the false advertising method of "false evaluation". The first amendment indicates that the victims of false advertising are not limited to consumers, but also include other operators. The second amendment actually regulates behaviors such as brushing positive reviews.

(3) Article 12 of the new law also includes "instructing others" to fabricate and disseminate false or misleading information in the regulation of objective acts of commercial defamation.

（2） Improve the regulations on unfair competition on the internet

The new law provides important supplements to Articles 13 and 14, which is a major highlight of the newly revised Anti Unfair Competition Law

(1) The second paragraph of Article 13 of the new law interprets "technical means" as "data, algorithms, and technology", and adds that operators shall not use "platform rules" to disrupt other business activities of other operators.

(2) The third paragraph of Article 13 of the new law adds that "Operators shall not obtain or use data lawfully held by other operators, harm the legitimate rights and interests of other operators, or disrupt market competition order by fraudulent, coercive, evasive, or destructive means such as technical management measures. This amendment strengthens the protection of data rights and interests, and regulates the path of "not illegally capturing" data that operators "legally hold" and take "technical management measures".

(3) The fourth paragraph of Article 13 of the new law adds that "Operators shall not abuse platform rules to directly or instruct others to engage in false transactions, false evaluations, or malicious returns against other operators, which damages the legitimate rights and interests of other operators and disrupts market competition order." This paragraph is a response to the occurrence of "malicious transactions" and other behaviors in practice.

(4) The new law adds Article 14, which states that "platform operators shall not force or indirectly force platform operators to sell goods at prices lower than cost in accordance with their pricing rules, thereby disrupting market competition order. This article has been revised and improved to regulate the "internal competition" of governance platforms, explicitly prohibiting platforms from oppressing low-priced competition.

（3） Add regulations to address overdue corporate accounts

The new law adds Article 15, which prohibits large enterprises and other operators from abusing their advantageous position in terms of funds, technology, trading channels, industry influence, etc., and requires small and medium-sized enterprises to accept obviously unreasonable payment terms, methods, conditions, and breach of contract liabilities, and to delay payments for goods, projects, services, etc. owed to small and medium-sized enterprises. This article also prohibits large enterprises from abusing their advantageous position to delay payments and setting unreasonable trading conditions to protect the legitimate rights and interests of small and medium-sized enterprises.

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2、 The potential impact of intellectual property protection on enterprises

The newly revised Anti Unfair Competition Law provides a new protection path for enterprise intellectual property protection beyond traditional intellectual property protection laws such as patents and trademarks. This revision not only supplements and refines traditional unfair competition behaviors, but also fills the regulatory gap of new competition behaviors in the digital economy era.

The specific impact on the protection of intellectual property rights for enterprises:

(1) Emerging assets such as new media account names, application names, or icons are included in the scope of protection under the Anti Unfair Competition Law;

(2) The use of keywords, especially the implicit use of keywords, if there is a possibility of confusion, will also be considered as unfair competition behavior;

(3) The new law explicitly protects the commercial data rights and interests of operators in the form of a "behavior law", which means that the data rights and interests of operators are protected through the path of "not illegally capturing" the data that operators "legally hold" and taking "technical management measures";

(4) The new law has revised and improved the regulations on the governance of "internal competition" in platforms, which prohibits platforms from oppressing low price competition and prohibits large enterprises from abusing their relative advantage to oppress small and medium-sized enterprises.