Action for unfair competition

Combating unfair competition has several plans: we have in mind a national legislative framework and an international one. In international law, the fight against unfair competition is achieved both at the regional level - through the institutions of the European Union - and worldwide, within the framework provided by the World Trade Organization.

Also, the protection of human rights is an effective tool, used even by companies; thus, in a recent case, using all the procedural-procedural legal means, the European Court of Human Rights was reached.

The effects of the globalization of the protection of intellectual and industrial property rights are noticed both by the hierarchy of legal norms (national and international), and by the multitude of courts or by the establishment of specialized arbitral tribunals.

The study of unfair competition highlights not only the problems due to globalization and the development of technology and IT tools, but also, in the European space, those due to guaranteeing the free movement of people, services, capital and goods. Thus, there are problems regarding the priority competition regarding the name of the company, the domain name in the virtual space (internet) and the brand.

Unfair competition is a tool used in consumer protection policy - which has abundant legislation in the European space - transposed into domestic legal rules.

In competition law, the notion of unfair competition designates, synthetically, that economic competition between traders and / or any other persons who carry out economic activities, in which dishonest means are used.

This definition is not too rigorous from a scientific point of view, because its conceptual kernel is a moral one.

Business morality is a particular form, a kind of universal morality, it is the sum of legal constraints and honest commercial practices sanctioned by law.

In the Romanian legislation, unfair competition is regulated by Law no. 11/1991 on combating unfair competition, Law no. 148/2000 regarding advertising, Ordinance no. 99/2000 regarding the marketing of market products and services, Law no. 21/1996 and Law no. 298/2001 for the amendment and completion of Law no. 11/1991.

The criterion for determining unfair competition is disloyalty and not misappropriation of customers. Unfair competition regulations are about means and not goals.

The rules that sanction unfair competition protect the economic interests of various traders against acts contrary to business morality, committed by some traders.

The act of competition is not illegal in itself, but only if the means used to attract customers are illegal.