Protection Against Unfair Competition Act 2002, general unfair-competition clause
Protection Against Unfair Competition Act 2002 (Act No. 19 of 2002, 2020 Revised Edition), s. 4
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force since 1 September 2008.
An unfair competition rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 5 September 2026.
What it requires
- An act or practice, in the course of industrial or commercial activities, that departs from fair dealing in commercial practice, which could plausibly reach a competitor's systematic crawling and commercial reuse of a business's site content, is unfair competition; no reported Tongan case has tested that application against a scraper.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureNo
Private right of actionYes
What it reaches
Obligation class
Prohibition
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Section 4(1) provides that, in addition to the specific acts sections 5 to 9 separately address (causing confusion, damaging goodwill, misleading the public, discrediting an enterprise, and misusing secret information), any act or practice, in the course of industrial or commercial activities, that departs from fair dealing in commercial practice constitutes an act of unfair competition.
Section 4(2) entitles any person damaged or likely to be damaged by an act of unfair competition to the remedies obtainable under the general law of Tonga, without stating a fixed statutory penalty or damages figure of its own. The Act's own text records its commencement as 1 September 2008; the WIPO Lex database record for the same consolidated text separately lists an entry-into-force date of 1 October 2008, a discrepancy left unreconciled here.
When LexLint raises it
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