On January 26, 2014, the State Administration for Industry and
Commerce released "Measures for the Administration of Online
Transactions" (hereunder referred to as "the
Measures"), to further strengthen the regulation of online
transactions. The Measures have come into force on March 15 and the
previous "Interim Measures for the Administration of Online
Commodities Trading and the Relevant Services" (hereunder
referred as to the "Interim Measures") are revoked.
The Measures (1) strengthen the protection of consumers interest
and personal information, (2) regulate the competition between
business operators, (3) defines what is a trading platform
(marketplace) and other relevant service operators (storage
service, courier service, etc), and clarify their obligations with
regards to protecting intellectual property rights. Moreover, the
Measures reinforce the AIC's supervision on network
transactions. Unfortunately, they make no change to the
administrative
