Beijing Chaoyang Court Rules Unfair Competition in Navigation Data Scraping, Awards 12.5 Million Yuan Compensation

According to a report from the "Chaoyang Law Garden" WeChat public account, on June 28 a case concerning the "congestion delay index" data of a navigation electronic map was heard publicly in the Chaoyang District People's Court, Beijing.

The plaintiff, Beijing Gaode Cloud Map Technology Co., Ltd. and Gaode Software Co., Ltd., alleged that the defendant, Wande Information Technology Co., Ltd., used unfair means to capture the "congestion delay index" data and incorporated it into a paid financial terminal software for commercial profit, constituting unfair competition and seeking compensation of over 48 million yuan.

The defendant argued that the data were publicly available on the plaintiff’s website, collected manually, and did not involve any unfair competition methods, thus lacking factual and legal basis for the plaintiff’s claim.

The court concluded that the "congestion delay index" data have high application and market value, enabling precise, concise, and quantitative expression of city traffic congestion, and that the plaintiff’s use of this data to gain competitive advantage constitutes a competitive right protected by the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.

The court found that the defendant employed improper techniques such as IP address manipulation and browser identifier spoofing to capture the data, stored it in a financial terminal software, and distributed it to paying users for commercial purposes, violating commercial ethics and the principle of good faith, harming the plaintiff’s legitimate rights and consumer interests, and disrupting market order in the data field, thereby constituting unfair competition.

Consequently, the court ordered the defendant to cease the infringement, eliminate its impact, and compensate the two plaintiffs for economic losses and reasonable litigation expenses, totaling 12.5 million yuan.

The case involved Beijing Gaode Cloud Map Technology Co., Ltd. and Gaode Software Co., Ltd. as plaintiffs, and Wande Information Technology Co., Ltd., a well‑known financial software service company headquartered in Shanghai, as the defendant.

The "congestion delay index" is a data product developed by the plaintiffs using raw map data, user travel data, and real‑time traffic information, representing the ratio of actual vehicle travel time to travel time under free‑flow conditions; a higher ratio indicates more severe congestion.