On April 13, 2021, Shanghai Intellectual Property Court (hereinafter referred to as Shanghai IP Court) held a press conference to release the White Paper and typical cases of trail of unfair competition cases from 2015 to 2020.

From 2015 to 2020, Shanghai IP Court accepted 950 unfair competition cases of various types, accounting for 6.2% of the total number of intellectual property cases received in the same period, and closed 850 cases. The overall number of received and closed cases revealed an upward trend, with an average annual growth rate of 21.2%. In terms of case types, counterfeiting and confusion cases accounted for 72%, infringement of trade secrets cases accounted for 14.3%, as well as false propaganda, commercial slander cases, other unfair competition cases and cases with the above two or more unfair competition behaviors at the same time.

According to the White Paper, the unfair competition cases mainly present the following characteristics:

1. Unfair competition behaviors are intertwined with other acts of infringement of intellectual property rights;

2. The target price of the first instance litigation is high. There are 24 cases with the target price ranging from 5 million yuan to 10 million yuan, and 29 cases with the target price of more than 10 million yuan;

3. There are various types of unfair competition behaviors related to the Internet, including the extension of traditional unfair competition in the Internet field and new unfair competition behaviors occurring under the Internet environment;

4. There are many new types of cases, which are difficult and complicated and have great social impact.