17200. As used in this chapter, unfair competition shall mean and include any unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business act or practice and unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising and any act prohibited by Chapter 1 (commencing with Section 17500) of Part 3 of Division 7 of the Business and Professions Code.
Intellectual property offences provide well-known examples of unfair competition – these include counterfeiting, trade secret misappropriation and design right infringement.
Generally, unfair competition consists of two elements: First, there is some sort of economic injury to a business, such as loss of sales or consumer goodwill. Second, this economic injury is the result of deceptive or otherwise wrongful business practice.
The UCL forbids "unlawful, unfair or fraudulent" conduct in connection with virtually any type of business activity. With its sweeping liability standards and broad equitable remedies, the UCL is often the weapon of choice for plaintiffs' lawyers and is almost uniformly invoked by prosecutors in consumer cases.
Unfair competition is conduct by a market participant which gains or seeks to gain an advantage over its rivals through misleading, deceptive, dishonest, fraudulent, coercive or unconscionable conduct in trade or commerce.
Unfair Competition is a form of intellectual property protection relating to actions which cause economic injury to a business through deceptive or otherwise unfair acts. The purpose of unfair competition law is to protect consumers and competitors from deceptive or unethical conduct in commerce.
The federal Clayton Act prohibits mergers whose effect “may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly….” 15 U.S.C. § 13. In Staff's view, this language has been interpreted to impose a “probability” standard that has deterred federal agencies from challenging mergers.
The Cartwright Act, California's primary antitrust statute, generally prohibits agreements that restrain trade or limit production, and agreements to increase or fix prices or otherwise prevent competition.
The Consumers Legal Remedies Act makes unlawful certain unfair methods of competition and certain unfair or deceptive acts or practices undertaken by a person in a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to a consumer, including advertising goods or services with intent ...
Civil Penalty for Violation of Chapter (a) Any person who engages, has engaged, or proposes to engage in unfair competition shall be liable for a civil penalty not to exceed two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) for each violation, which shall be assessed and recovered in a civil action brought in the name of the ...