Effectiveness of legal remedies against unfair competition

Unfair competition law performs a multi-purpose function in a market economy. Its role is not only to protect honest entrepreneurs from competitors' dishonest practices, but also to ensure equal opportunities, foster a healthy competitive environment, and protect consumers from misleading, deceptive, or otherwise harmful commercial practices that may distort their decision-making in the market. Unfair competition law thus constitutes an integral component of the broader regulatory system of economic competition, contributing to the stability and efficient functioning of the market.

The development of digital technologies, the significant shift of marketing activities into the online environment, the emergence of new forms of commercial communication, including influencer marketing, ¹⁾ Moreover, increasingly aggressive marketing strategies substantially shape competitive behaviour. Traditional forms of misleading advertising are now accompanied by new phenomena - including greenwashing, ²⁾ covert commercial communications, and manipulative online practices (dark patterns) - characterized by a high degree of technical and psychological sophistication. These trends raise the professional debate on legal protection against unfair competition to a new level and test the limits of existing substantive and procedural instruments developed under markedly different technological and media conditions.

Protection against unfair competition is not based solely on the existence of substantive legal rules, but above all on their effective enforcement through procedural law. It is precisely the procedural mechanisms that determine whether legal protection is applied swiftly, effectively, and to an extent capable of preventing the deepening of harmful effects caused by unfair competitive conduct. In Slovak legal scholarship, however, unlike in Czech legal doctrine ³⁾ , a standalone monograph comprehensively analyzing procedural remedies against unfair competition is still lacking. Although scientific studies exist that address individual procedural claims ⁴⁾ or selected judicial decisions, ⁵⁾ Their scope does not yet provide a complete picture of the application problems and the limitations of adequate judicial protection.

The aim of this article is therefore to examine the effectiveness of legal instruments for protection against unfair competition as regulated in the Commercial Code and in the Civil Dispute Code (hereinafter, "CDC") and to critically assess their capacity to respond to the current needs of business practice. When evaluating the effectiveness of legal remedies, one cannot abstract from the institutional framework in which protection is implemented. The Civil Dispute Code (CDC) introduced a fundamental change in the architecture of judicial jurisdiction, with a direct impact on the speed and expertise of proceedings. Unlike disputes concerning industrial property, which under § 25 CDC fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of a single specialised court (the District Court Banská Bystrica) for the entire territory of the Slovak Republic, disputes arising from unfair competition are subject to the divided causal jurisdiction of three district courts (the Bratislava III Municipal Court, the District Court Banská Bystrica, and the Košice Municipal Court) pursuant to § 26 CDC. This legislative dualism becomes critically important in cases of so-called cross-protection, where the factual circumstances of the case simultaneously concern unfair competition and intellectual property rights (e.g., parasitic use of a trade mark). In the interest of procedural economy and to avoid duplicative proceedings, the CDC introduces the jurisdictional attraction, whereby the dispute is transferred to the court competent for industrial property matters. Knowledge of these procedural rules is a prerequisite for adequate defence, since filing an action with a court lacking subject-matter jurisdiction inevitably leads to delays caused by the transfer of the case.

The analysis will focus particularly on traditional private-law claims - prohibitory (injunctive) claims, removal claims, satisfaction claims, and claims for damages - evaluating their applicability and practical effectiveness in confronting the real forms of competitive torts, including modern manifestations of unfair competition arising in the digital environment.

Special attention must also be paid to procedural instruments under the Civil Disputes Code (CDC), especially interim measures, which, in practice, represent the fastest and often the only truly effective means of protection in situations of ongoing or imminent interference with competitors' rights.

Slovak legislation also provides affected entities with the option to seek protection against certain forms of unfair competition through public law - the Advertising Act and the Consumer Protection Act. These statutes make it possible to penalize specific manifestations of unfair competition - particularly misleading or covert advertising, or aggressive commercial practices - without the injured party needing to initiate civil litigation. The advantages of this approach include a significantly l