21st Century Business Herald reporter Zhang Chi

You can buy in-depth information on workplace networks in the second-hand market for just 1 yuan, which can only be seen by registering as a member for over 90 yuan per month. This is the first case concluded by the Beijing Internet Court applying the new "data earmark" after the implementation of the current anti unfair competition law.

On the surface, this is a simple case of "grabbing data to sell for money", but in essence, it answers three core questions:

How is the data legally held by the platform protected by law?

How to apply the newly added data special fund in the Anti Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China?

When AI agents become new tools for data capture, do these rules still apply?

1 yuan to buy data gray production for 90 yuan membership service

The plaintiff operates a well-known workplace social platform in China, which has a massive amount of workplace data formed through user authorization and long-term accumulation, including names, company positions, work experience, etc. Users can browse this information by paying a monthly membership fee of more than 90 yuan. And the defendant Wang used multiple mobile phone numbers to register platform accounts, recharge members, and automatically crawl the "only member visible data" within the platform through a crawler. The captured data was imported into the website he built and resold according to viewing permissions ranging from 1-15 yuan. This website has been in operation for at least 8 months and has a considerable sales volume.

The plaintiff claims that the defendant's actions constitute unfair competition and demands the cessation of infringement and compensation for losses. The defendant argues that his website only provides short-term temporary queries for 1-7 days, which does not constitute a substantial replacement for the plaintiff's long-term social services. The defendant also has no subjective malice and has voluntarily stopped it.

The court ultimately did not adopt its defense and ordered the defendant to compensate for economic losses of 200000 yuan and pay reasonable expenses of over 30000 yuan.

Identification of Unfair Competition in Newly Added Legal Provisions

This is the first case concluded by the Beijing Internet Court in accordance with the newly added data appropriation provisions of the Anti unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China.

Previously, competition disputes in China's data field have long relied on two resolution paths.

One is the general provision of Article 2 of the Anti Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China, which stipulates that operators should follow the principles of voluntariness, equality, fairness, and integrity, and abide by laws and business ethics. But this standard of "business ethics" is too abstract, and there are significant differences in the understanding of what behavior violates business ethics among different judges and cases, resulting in inconsistent judgment standards.

The second is the four types of Internet unfair competition behaviors explicitly prohibited in Article 12 of the Anti unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China before the amendment: (1) inserting links in the network products or services legally provided by other operators without their consent, and forcing target jumps; （2） Misleading, deceiving, forcing users to modify, shut down, or uninstall network products or services legally provided by other operators; （3） Malicious implementation of incompatibility with network products or services lawfully provided by other operators; （4） Other behaviors that hinder or disrupt the normal operation of network products or services lawfully provided by other operators.

Due to the significant differences between the first three types of behavior, such as jumping links, misleading users to uninstall competitors, and malicious incompatibility, and improper data scraping, some courts often choose to invoke the fourth fallback clause when adjudicating data disputes. However, the fallback clause is difficult to accurately regulate data unfair competition behavior.

In 2025, the second revision of the Anti Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China was completed, and Article 13, Paragraph 3 of the new law added a special fund for data unfair competition, which states that "operators shall not obtain or use data lawfully held by other operators, harm the legitimate rights and interests of other operators, and disrupt market competition order through fraud, coercion, avoidance, or destruction of technical management measures and other unfair means.

This clause contains four elements, namely the object element (data lawfully held by other operators), the subject element (operators), the behavior element (obtaining and using in an improper manner), and the result element (damaging the legitimate rights and interests of other operators and disrupting market competition order).

The newly added terms do not prohibit all data crawling behaviors uniformly, but only prohibit the acquisition and use in an "improper manner". If the website's crawling agreement or platform rules are followed and public data is accessed normally, it generally does not constitute illegal behavior. This leaves a legitimate space for the development of new formats such as AI, which not only protects the legitimate rights and interests of data holders, but also cannot stifle data circulation and innovation. At the same time, it also regulates the two behaviors of "acquisition" and "use". Even if the data is obtained through legal channels, if the use exceeds a reasonable range, it may still constitute unfair competition.

In this case, the defendant's behavior falls into the category of "avoiding technical management measures". The platform explicitly prohibits users from registering multiple accounts and using accounts to carry out data crawling behavior through the Service Agreement, and has set up multiple technical protection measures. The defendant's use of multiple accounts to recharge members and the development of web crawlers to evade technical measures and capture data from the entire platform is itself an "improper way".

On the issue of data sources, the court did not dwell on whether the data belongs to the platform or registered users. Instead, based on the fact that the data in question was lawfully collected by the plaintiff, integrated and maintained at a significant cost, and could bring market competitive advantages to the plaintiff, the court determined that the data belonged to the plaintiff's "lawful possession".

The defendant publicly sold on their own website, illegally seizing the plaintiff's users and market share, which had a substantial substitution effect on the plaintiff's main business and may bring data security risks. This not only damaged the plaintiff's legitimate rights and interests, but also disrupted the competitive order of the data market.

Based on this, the court determined that the defendant constituted unfair competition, and this judicial logic may provide a framework for future data competition disputes.

The Value of Data in the AI Era

Behind the verdict in this case is the judicial confirmation of the value of data. At present, data has become an important carrier of the core competitiveness of the platform economy. Data collection is the core asset of the platform, containing enormous commercial value and innovation potential.

Data is also the fuel of the AI era, and the judgment logic of this case may have reference significance for new disputes in new technologies such as AI intelligent agents. Imagine when an intelligent agent has autonomy and high authority, and launches a network attack under the guidance of instructions, do developers still bear responsibility at this time? For example, in the e-commerce scenario, if an AI agent directly calls an app without platform authorization to obtain personal privacy data such as a user's account and shopping preferences, and once it infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of relevant parties, how should the responsibility be divided?

From the current legal framework, intelligent agents themselves do not have legal subject qualifications and cannot become responsible entities. The consensus in the legal community is that service providers and users should be identified as the responsible parties. This means that no matter how autonomous the behavior of the intelligent agent is, the developers and deployers behind it cannot be exempted from liability on this grounds. But the specific allocation of responsibility, such as where the developer's obligation boundary lies and under what circumstances the user's usage behavior needs to be held responsible, still requires more judicial practice to clarify.

It is worth noting that in May 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on the Standardized Application and Innovative Development of Intelligent Agents", which set the "security, reliability, and trustworthiness" of intelligent agents as the bottom line requirements. The document clearly requires clarification of the reasonable boundaries and required permissions for various decision-making methods such as "user only decision-making", "user authorized decision-making", and "autonomous decision-making by intelligent agents", to ensure that users have the right to be informed and the final decision-making power for autonomous decision-making by intelligent agents, and that the execution of operations by intelligent agents shall not exceed the scope of user authorization.

The implementation opinion echoes the logic of the data special fund judgment in this case. In terms of data acquisition, if an intelligent agent bypasses platform technology measures and crawls data without the user's knowledge, developers will face dual legal risks. On the one hand, they will bear the legal responsibility of unfair competition for violating data special fund regulations, and on the other hand, they will face regulatory risks for violating the Implementation Opinions.

Furthermore, the autonomy of intelligent agents is changing the form of risk. Although this case is a judgment against "human written crawlers", the established rule framework has certain reference significance for resolving data disputes in the era of AI intelligent agents.