TongaProtection Against Unfair Competition Act 2002, general unfair-competition clause
Protection Against Unfair Competition Act 2002 (Act No. 19 of 2002, 2020 Revised Edition), s. 4
In force since .
An unfair competition rule binding public and private bodies.
- Criminal exposure
- No
- Private right of action
- No
- Obligation class
- Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- An act or practice, in the course of industrial or commercial activities, that departs from fair dealing in commercial practice, which could plausibly reach a competitor's systematic crawling and commercial reuse of a business's site content, is unfair competition; no reported Tongan case has tested that application against a scraper.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
The Act names no enforcement authority; a person damaged or likely to be damaged by an act of unfair competition looks to the remedies obtainable under the law of Tonga, and the Act defines the court as the Supreme Court of Tonga.
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does the general clause in section 4(1) of the Protection Against Unfair Competition Act, which reaches an act or practice in the course of industrial or commercial activities that is contrary to honest commercial practices, cover a competitor's systematic crawling and commercial reuse of a business's site content?
- Which remedies are 'obtainable under the law of Tonga' under section 4(2) for a person damaged by an act of unfair competition, given that the Act creates no cause of action or remedy of its own?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 4 states the general clause on unfair competition and gives a person damaged or likely to be damaged by it the remedies available under Tonga's law. It imposes no duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record, names no audit and has no territorial clause of its own.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Section 4(1) provides that, in addition to the specific acts sections 5 to 9 separately address (causing confusion, damaging goodwill, misleading the public, discrediting an enterprise, and misusing secret information), any act or practice, in the course of industrial or commercial activities, that departs from fair dealing in commercial practice constitutes an act of unfair competition.
Section 4(2) preserves for any person damaged or likely to be damaged by an act of unfair competition the remedies obtainable under the general law of Tonga; the Act itself grants no cause of action and states no penalty or damages figure. The Act's own text records its commencement as ; the WIPO Lex database record for the same consolidated text separately lists an entry-into-force date of , a discrepancy left unreconciled here.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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