On April 7, Shengdian Law Firm held a special lecture on "Defense Strategies and Key Points for Cases of Internet Infringement of Legal Person's Reputation Rights" as scheduled. This lecture was organized by Shengdian Civil and Commercial Dispute Resolution Legal Professional Committee, with lawyer Niu Yuxiang, a member of Shengdian Young Eagle Lawyers Program, as the sharing guest. Lawyer Niu Yuxiang is mainly engaged in civil and commercial dispute resolution (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao), labor compliance and anti-unfair competition business, and has represented a number of companies in the import of goods, legal person reputation rights, employee competition restrictions and other civil and commercial dispute cases, participated in litigation and successfully recovered losses.

A total of 58 people from Shengdian, including senior partners, partners, lawyers, paralegals and some colleagues outside the institute, attended the lecture.

Lawyer Niu Yuxiang, in combination with the case he represented, shared with the participants present the connotation and extension of legal person's reputation right, the legality and rationality of the plaintiff's claim, whether the defendant's behavior constituted infringement, whether the defendant had exemption or reduction of responsibility, and the key points of communication after the judgment. On the basis of legal provisions, combined with judicial practice, legal theory research and other perspectives, lawyer Niu discussed in depth the defense strategies and key points of legal person reputation cases when lawyers act as agents of defendants.

On the connotation and extension of "legal person's right of reputation. The legal provisions on the right of reputation of legal persons can be found in articles 110 and 1024 of the the People's Republic of China Civil Code. As a class of civil subjects, legal persons enjoy the right of reputation. No organization or individual may infringe upon the right of reputation of others by insulting or defaming. Although "reputation" has been defined in the Civil Code, that is, reputation is the social evaluation of the moral character, prestige, talent, credit, etc. of the civil subject, it is doubtful how it is reflected in the civil subject of "legal person. Lawyer Niu Yuxiang compares the reputation rights of legal persons with the reputation rights of natural persons in terms of the fundamental attributes of civil subjects, the basis for the generation of rights, the purpose of protection of rights, and whether they have the attributes of economic interests, etc., and concludes that the reputation rights of legal persons should focus on "commercial attributes" or "property attributes", thus establishing the direction of defense of the whole case.

Regarding the demonstration of the legality and rationality of the litigation request, Lawyer Niu argued that it is necessary to judge whether the plaintiff's litigation request has specific litigation request, facts and reasons in accordance with Article 122 of the the People's Republic of China Civil Procedure Law. For the term "concrete", it is necessary to combine the characteristics of the Internet itself, such as remoteness, non-centrality, virtuality and scale of transmission channels, and to consider more in terms of time scope, space scope and performance elements.

On the question of whether the defendant's act of issuing a document constitutes infringement, lawyer Niu Yuxiang has carried out four aspects: subjective fault, infringement, infringement result and causation. Especially in the determination of infringement results and causality, lawyer Niu Yuxiang pointed out that, first of all, for the infringement results, in the case trial, it is easy to be expanded to understand. If in the process of defense, there is no emphasis and accurate demonstration and distinction between "subjective reputation damage" and "objective reputation damage", the judge will easily be "led away" by the plaintiff, equating or confusing the two, and then determining the existence of damage results; Secondly, for the determination of causality, rigorous logical argumentation is essential, if there is only a factual causal relationship but it cannot be established in legal causation, it should not be attributed to the defendant.

At the end of the sharing, lawyer Niu Yuxiang emphasized the important role of "looking backwards" thinking in this case, that is, lawyers need to consider the social guidance effect of case judgments in the process of handling cases. Whether the evaluation subject is exercising the function of public opinion supervision, whether the subject being evaluated should have a certain tolerance obligation to the evaluation itself, and whether it has the obligation to actively respond to public opinion concerns.

In the exchange session, the participants enthusiastically asked questions. Among them, the questions and replies with universal value are:

Question posed:The legal value of the positive response of the subject being evaluated?

Cow lawyer reply:In this case, to some extent, reference is made to the "right of press response". The right of news response refers to the right to self-declare and clarify the facts in the media reporting the facts in order to respond when the reported person believes that the facts reported by the media are inconsistent with the true situation. In this case, the plaintiff, whether through his own media platform or other official media interviews, has the opportunity to take measures to protect himself, pertinence can accurately avoid the spread of misinformation. However, the plaintiff's negative treatment of "no comment" can be regarded as giving up the self-reliant relief that can take the initiative to eliminate the obstruction of reputation right through clarification.

This lecture is one of the series of activities that Shengdian continues to cultivate and expand the legal service field of civil and commercial law. Shengdian will continue to carry out activities related to legal services in a number of business areas. We will provide customers with flexible and unique professional services, tailor-made service solutions, and provide professional and efficient solutions to complex challenges faced by customers, industries and society.