Enterprises can safeguard rights, but not take undue advantages

As market competition becomes increasingly fierce and market rules improve in China, more enterprises are solving their disputes and safeguarding their rights legally. This is also a recognition of the judicial organ.

However, in reality, some people view litigations initiated by some enterprises through “rose-tinted glasses”. For example, the legal departments of some influential domestic enterprises are called the “most capable legal departments”, meaning they always win the lawsuits. This puts pressure not only on such enterprises when they decide to seek legal discourse on some issues, but also on the judicial organs.

That is why the business research academy under Caijing magazine recently joined hands with the intellectual property school of the East China University of Political Science and Law to host an academic forum to discuss how to solve the “prisoner’s dilemma” facing enterprises.

It is normal for the public to pay more attention to the litigation behavior of enterprises, especially those large and well-known ones, and give diversified interpretations. This requires involved enterprises and relevant judicial organs to respond to public concerns more actively and ease their misgivings through greater transparency and information disclosure. Enterprises’ litigation cases easily spark public controversies because of the lack of sufficient benign interactions between judicial organs, the public and the media. At the start of the year, the Supreme People’s Court said it is necessary for judicial authorities to innovate their working mechanisms and strengthen cooperation with the public and media.

When it comes to corporate litigations, it is obviously beyond reasonable scope to have a preconception, or even “presumption of guilt” and “conspiracy theory”. For example, in October, when a local court ruled in favor of a plaintiff in a common intellectual property rights infringement case, a TV drama producer filed a case against a short video platform, but the verdict triggered a great public controversy on the internet, bringing considerable pressures to the court, the plaintiff and even the defendant.

The public should realize that litigation is not only an important means for enterprise competition, but also a legal weapon enterprises can resort to for fair and open competition. In a sense, that more enterprises are filing cases indicates that the market is entering a more standards-based and fair competition stage. At the same time, the possibility of companies intervening in judicial decision-making by taking advantage of their resources and influence should be prevented.