Company is prohibited from sending employees to research products from other ...

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A company that sends employees to a competitor's store to collect product data, such as characteristics and price, practices unfair competition. This is what judge Dorival Renato Pavan, of the Court of Justice of Mato Grosso do Sul, understood when prohibiting employees of a consultancy and technology company from entering the stores of a home and construction materials chain, under penalty of a daily fine of R $10 thousand.


According to the author, all the items researched would serve to feed an online program consulted by a market competitor, which would make it reduce prices and unfairly attract consumers.

The 12th Civil Court of Campo Grande B2B Lead had denied the request for an injunction, recognizing free access for the defendant's employees to research the products displayed in the plaintiff's stores.

Represented by Raghiant, Torres e Medeiros Advogados , the construction materials chain filed an appeal. According to lawyers, the practice violates the constitutional principles of the inviolability of private property, free business activity and free competition.

Invasion of property
For judge Dorival Renato Pavan,  the author is not obliged to allow them to carry out research in their stores that will benefit their competitors. According to him, the activity carried out by the defendant goes beyond the limits of simple informative research.

“In this case, it is not a question of the competitor using advertising, reducing its prices based on the values ​​used in the wholesale purchase of its products and offering them at retail, but rather of invading the appellant's property to collect data there. and images, including the barcode of the products, to encourage the competitor to charge lower prices, attracting a clientele that belonged to the appellant, causing it losses in its own sales”, he analyzed.



Therefore, Pavan granted an injunction to suspend the first instance decision and prohibited researchers from entering the company's stores, under penalty of a daily fine of R$10,000 and committing the crime of disobedience.