Recently, Mr. Zhu Yuanxiao of King&Capital Law Firm won a case of commercial defamation dispute, which strongly defended the business reputation of the client. The dispute occurred between two well-known ECE training organizations, and the case started when Organization A suddenly released a certain note article on its Xiaohongshu account, accusing Organization B in many aspects. Once the article was released, it immediately triggered a hot debate in the industry, which had a negative impact on the reputation and brand of Institution B. In this crisis, the B agency found Zhu lawyer to seek help, in the lawyer team's professional analysis, help, the B agency not only successfully resolve the crisis, but also through litigation to protect their legitimate rights and interests.
First, the lawyer accurately characterization, to provide customers with the basis of rights.
After communicating and verifying with the client, Zhu initially judged that the behavior of organization A was suspected of constituting the business defamation behavior regulated by Article 11[1] of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law: Firstly, the two organizations A and B belong to the same art examination training industry, and there is a direct competitive relationship in the recruitment of art examination, which meets the subjective element of "operators with competitive relationship". Secondly, the content of the article issued by organization A is seriously inaccurate and highly misleading, which is in line with the behavioral and object elements of "fabrication and dissemination of false and misleading information"; thirdly, after the article was issued by organization A, it directly triggered a lot of negative comments from the industry and the group of art examiners on organization B, which is in line with the requirement of "competitor's commercial reputation and reputation" and "competitors' commercial reputation and reputation". Third, the publication of the article by Organization A directly triggered many negative comments about Organization B in the industry and among the group of art candidates, which conformed to the element of result of "causing damage to the business reputation and goodwill of competitors". In addition, the time of Agency A's article was during the admission season of art exams, and the article was posted on the platform of Little Red Book, which is the most concerned by art exam candidates, so it is obvious that its subjective malice is obvious. The lawyer team's professional analysis and accurate characterization of the case laid the foundation for the success of subsequent rights defense.
Second, the first time to take evidence, issued a statement and lawyer's letter, the effect is beginning to show.
After the accurate characterization of the case, the case team took the first time to fix the evidence through notarization and time-stamping to prevent the other party from deleting and losing the evidence of our rights defense once the other party deletes the articles released by the organization A and its shareholders and their attached comments and the information of the Xiaohongshu account. After completing the forensics, the case team assisted the client to release an official statement on its Xiaohongshu account, responding to the malicious and defamatory behavior of Agency A in a timely manner and clarifying the relevant facts. Afterwards, the client issued a letter in the name of the lawyer, telling the other party that it was suspected of constituting commercial defamation, and requesting the other party to stop infringing on the rights of the client and eliminate the influence, or else we would take the litigation route to defend our rights. Fortunately, through a series of effective measures taken by the client and the lawyer team, the adverse public opinion of organization B was no longer fermented, but regrettably, organization A still did not delete the article in time.
Third, we fought hard for the judgment of the lawsuit.
In view of organization A did not delete the article in a timely manner, in order to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests, organization B decided to start the litigation process on the grounds that organization A constituted commercial defamation. Agency A, however, filed a counterclaim before the trial and instead claimed that Agency B had committed commercial defamation. In this case, the case team overcame a number of difficulties before finally securing a judgment in favor of the client. For example, the Little Red Book account that published the article in question did not have real-name authentication, and Agency A denied that it was an act of its company; the judge who handled the case lacked knowledge of Little Red Book and its influence on dissemination, and so on.
The biggest difficulty in this case is that, compared to other cases, the number of cases involving commercial defamation disputes is not large, and the judge lacks more mature adjudication rules and case guidelines in adjudicating the case. In view of this, the case team, on the one hand, around the elements of the case, collect factual evidence, strengthen the argument. In particular, through the tabulation method, the case will be involved in a number of articles suspected of constituting the content of commercial defamation, the main content of the comments, the number of fans of each account, the number of likes and favorites, etc., listed, in order to reduce the judge's workload at the same time, to provide a factual basis for the decision. On the other hand, on the basis of searching for cases of the same cause in the North, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other regions, the team screened out more than a dozen cases with reference value (which included a number of cases adjudicated by the higher courts of the court hearing the case) and submitted them to the court to provide case support for the judges to dare to adjudicate.
Finally, under the unremitting efforts of the case team, the court finally determined that Agency A constituted commercial defamation and ruled that it should delete the article in question, issue a statement on its posting Little Red Book account and place it on the top of the page continuously, in order to eliminate the adverse impact on Agency B and compensate for the damages. At the same time, the court rejected all of Agency A's counterclaims. At this point, we won the case.
Our victory in this case not only strongly safeguarded our client's goodwill, but also served as a warning to "Organization A", which tries to gain a competitive advantage by improper means such as damaging others' goodwill. The professional, meticulous and responsible work of the lawyer team was highly recognized by the client.
Case lawyers in this special tips: the network is by no means outside the law, the company speech should be more cautious, once touching the bottom line of the law, will eventually be sanctioned by law. At the same time, in the face of malignant slander between peers, should be the first time to seek the help of professional lawyers, in order to be able to timely and effective response, to maximize the maintenance of their legitimate rights and interests.
Notes:
[1] Article 11 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law (amended in 2019) stipulates that operators shall not fabricate or disseminate false information or misleading information to damage the business reputation and commodity reputation of competitors.
