Meituan, a Chinese shopping platform for locally found consumer products, has been ruled to pay local competitor Ele.me RMB 352,000 ($53,852) for unfair competition infringement.
The case is the first unfair competition infringement case in the takeaway industry determined through a new law that came into effect in 2018.
The ruling comes after a Zhejiang-based company owned by Ele.me sued a Meituan subsidiary, and the Huai'an Intermediate People's Court in Jiangsu Province recently issued the verdict.
Ele.me claimed that the latter required some merchants to enter into exclusive deals with it, which constituted an act of unfair competition.
Another recent verdict shows that Ele.me paid Meituan RMB 80,000 for economic losses due to unfair competition.
The verdict shows that Ele.me's account manager visited a snack store in 2019 to negotiate an exclusive partnership, and after the store owner refused, the online store was shut down by Ele.me that night.
This is the second time Ele.me has lost a lawsuit for unfair competition after its owner Alibaba was fined RMB 18.2 billion in an anti-monopoly probe.
On Tuesday, Meituan, Alibaba and 19 other e-commerce platform companies signed an anti-monopoly undertaking.
