Koo Employees Quit Job And Easily Lead To Unfair Competition

Recently, the five court investigation of Haidian District court found that the unfair competition behaviors between high-tech enterprises and employee turnover were prone to trend, which accounted for nearly 1/4 of all unfair competition disputes.

Taking 2015 as an example, 21 such cases have gradually become the main types of unfair competition cases.

From the point of view of disputes, it involves different types of counterfeiting, false propaganda, commercial slander, infringement of business secrets and so on.

According to the court of Haidian District, this phenomenon is directly related to the special geographical advantages of Haidian District.

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In the process of development and expansion, these enterprises will inevitably encounter the flow of key employees such as technology and management. These employees will easily lead to unfair competition disputes, including counterfeiting, false propaganda, commercial slander, infringement of business secrets, and so on.

From the survey, the court of Haidian found such cases have these characteristics: first, the number of cases has increased steadily.

Statistics show that in 2006, the hospital handled 11 such cases, increased to 28 in 2008, and dropped to 20 in 2010. Since then, the cases have maintained a growth trend, 25 in 2011, 36 in 2012, 46 in 2013, 72 in 2012, and 82 in annual growth, reaching an average annual growth rate of 17%; as of the first half of the year, 65 have been accepted, representing an increase of 30% over the same period last year.

Among them, cases of unfair competition involving trade secrets are caused by the flow of employees.

The second characteristic of such cases is the complexity of the main body of the case.

The unfair competition disputes caused by employee turnover are mostly complex cases. The main reason is that job hopping staff and newly recruited enterprises are mainly joint defendants.

This requires that in the process of case trial, we should distinguish whether there is a joint tort between employees and enterprises, or whether they act separately, and distinguish whether there are common subjective faults between the two parties.

The longer trial period is another major feature of such cases.

According to statistics, the average duration of such cases is 142 days, far exceeding the average period of 57 days in other intellectual property cases.

In the actual cases of judgment, the trial period will be longer because of the factors such as identification, obtaining evidence, preservation, inquest, and waiting for other cases, and more than half of the cases will be beyond 6 months.

In addition, the rates of judgement and appeal are higher in these cases.

Over the past 10 years, the average rate of such cases has exceeded 50%, which is 60% percentage points lower than the average withdrawal rate of 10 cases in the General Court of Haidian court.

In addition, such cases are more irreconcilable due to contradictions between employees and their original units, resulting in a higher rate of appeal, exceeding 70%.

Caused by analysis

When the reasons for a large number of unfair competition disputes were aroused, the court of Haidian held that a more prominent factor is the overlapping of the core businesses between employees who have been employed, which is likely to lead to intensified competition.

It is precisely because of the core business of two enterprises that the core competitiveness resources of an enterprise can play an important role in making up the short board and enhancing the competitive strength of another enterprise. Therefore, the core assets or important resources of the important business information, business mode and intellectual property acquired by the employees from the original enterprise can become an important service for the latter.

It even becomes the price of higher position and better treatment in the post enterprise.

With the development of Internet economy, employee turnover is more interregional, cross domain and cross industry.

The turnover of core employees usually causes much trouble to the operation of enterprises.

For example, the important business of the original enterprise is frustrated, and the complete evidence of rights can not be submitted in the process of litigation.

At the same time, the core staff turnover will cause instability in the relevant departments, exacerbating the difficulty of enterprise management.

Particularly fatal is that such behavior has enhanced the strength of the competitors, and has also caused the contradiction between the original and the departing employees and the post entry enterprises.

In addition, there are many cases where the core employees have many companies at the same time, and the overlapping of these businesses and products leads to disputes.

In such cases, due to the unclear role of employees, their behavior should be regarded as the behavior of which enterprise, the consequences of behavior, profits and responsibilities should belong to which enterprise, often difficult to distinguish, resulting in increasing the difficulty of identifying controversial facts.

It is also necessary to note that the complicated contractual relationship interwoven in unfair competition cases will make it more difficult to judge legitimate and legitimate behaviors.

Such unfair competition disputes are caused by employee turnover. Employees and the former unit as the plaintiff, as well as the remaining units with joint defendants, have contracts such as labor contracts, confidentiality agreements and competition agreements. The unfair competition is usually related to the contract between the defendant company and the third party customers.

In some cases, third party clients were also plaintiff clients.

The existence of this complex contractual relationship not only brings complexity to the fact finding procedure, but also increases the difficulty of judging the defendant's justifiable behavior.