Supreme People's Court Released Interpretation on Issues Concerning Application of Law in Hearing of Civil Cases Involving Disputes over Monopolistic Acts
ISSUING AUTHORITY:
Supreme People's Court
DATE OF ISSUANCE:
June 24, 2024
EFFECTIVE DATE:
July 1, 2024
In order to safeguard fair competition order in the market, and hear civil cases involving anti-monopoly disputes in a fair and efficient manner pursuant to the law, the Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Hearing of Civil Cases Involving Disputes over Monopolistic Acts (the “Interpretation”) was enacted pursuant to the provisions of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China, the Anti-monopoly Law of the People's Republic of China, the Civil Procedural Law of the People's Republic of China and other relevant laws by the Supreme People's Court. The Interpretation is effective from July 1, 2024.
The Interpretation consists of six chapters and 51 articles, covering the procedural provisions, definition of the relevant market, monopoly agreements, abusing market dominance, civil liability, and supplementary provisions.
The main contents are as follows:
1. To Improve the Mechanism for Connecting Administrative Law Enforcement with the Judiciary.
In order to implement the requirements of "improving the administrative law enforcement and judicial linkage mechanism" in Article 11 of the Anti-Monopoly Law, as amended in 2022, specific provisions have been made in articles 2, 10, 13, and 49 of the Interpretation in the following three areas: convergence of procedures; facts recognition; and application of law.
2. To Solve the Evidential Problem of ‘Difficult to Prove’ in Anti-monopoly Civil Litigation.
The Interpretation reduced the plaintiff's burden of proof and difficulty to prove, effectively protecting the interests of victims, strengthening the judicial regulation of monopoly behavior from the following four aspects: the first is to strengthen the connection between anti-monopoly administrative law enforcement and monopoly civil litigation and clarify the higher proof value of anti-monopoly administrative processing decision; the second is to clarify the distribution rules and standards of the burden of proof, and strengthen the transfer of the burden of proof; the third is to summarize domestic and foreign experience, strengthen the competitive effect and direct proof of market dominance; and, the fourth is to advocate the use of economic analysis and the use of expert opinions to help identify the evidence.
3. To Deal with the New Challenges of Anti-monopoly Law Enforcement and Judicature.
While information technology and digital economy promote economic growth and improve people's livelihood, there are also network effects, scale effects, and "winner-takes-all" phenomena, which created new challenges to anti-monopoly law enforcement and justice. To deal with such new challenges, the Interpretation summarized and put forward some targeted and scientific rules of judgment such as how to define relevant market, how to regulate monopoly agreement, and how to regulate abusing dominant market position, etc.
4. To Deal with the Most Harmful Monopoly Behavior (Horizontal Monopoly Agreement).
Horizontal monopoly agreement is not only the most harmful monopoly behavior, but also the most hidden monopoly behavior. In order to avoid the application of antitrust law, the operators of such agreements often do not form a written agreement. The operators "only do, not say", which result in that proof and identification of such agreements become difficult in practice.
Article 18 of the Interpretation specifically stipulates four considerations of "other coordinated acts" and rules for allocation of burden of proof. Article 18 also specifically clarifies the relevant standards of proof, appropriately reduces the burden of proof of the plaintiff, and helps to regulate the hidden "other cooperative acts".
5. To Decide the Damages and Compensation Relief for Victims of Monopoly Behavior.
The Interpretation stipulates damages for monopolistic acts from three paragraphs: paragraph 1 specifies the range of losses that a plaintiff can claim, including direct losses and reduced benefits relative to the condition that the alleged monopolistic conduct did not occur; paragraph 2 provides a reference method for determining the amount of damages; paragraph 3 provides a method for determining the amount of damages.
Reference:
《最高人民法院關于審理壟斷民事糾紛案件適用法律若干問題的解釋》
