According to a recent decision¹ issued by the State Court of São Paulo, the act of inducing consumers to uninstall competing app based on false assertions constitutes unfair competition.
In this case, the anti-virus app Du Speed Boster, owned by the Chinese company Baidu, issued alerts to its users suggesting that the competing Brazilian app Psafe should be uninstalled, given that the maintenance of the application in devices would allow contamination by a high risk virus, fact that was not confirmed by the court expert.
The Court held that this conduct caused great damage to the Brazilian security software, due to the defamation of the company’s reputation. Du Speed Booster’s appeal was dismissed, affirming the lower court’s decision that determined the removal of any citation to Psafe application as a security threat, the retraction on Baidu’s social media sites, and payment of damages to Psafe in the amount of approximately USD 140,000.