Recently, Tian Yuan, acting as an agent for a shared bicycle company, filed a lawsuit against a municipal administrative agency for illegally granting franchise rights in the shared electric bicycle sector. In the second instance, the Supreme People's Court ruled that the act constituted an abuse of administrative power to exclude and restrict competition, and ruled in favor of the plaintiff, revoking the administrative act in question.

This case was also selected as one of the "Typical Anti-Monopoly Cases of People's Courts in 2025" released by the Supreme People's Court on September 10. In its analysis of the typical significance of this case, the Supreme People's Court pointed out that this case is "the first case in which the Supreme People's Court has determined the abuse of administrative power to exclude and restrict competition," and stated that this case has "positive significance for promoting the genuine opening up of market access, deepening the construction of a unified national market, and increasing market vitality."

In this case, the defendants, the Municipal Administrative Approval Bureau and the Municipal Big Data Center, established a franchise for the shared electric bicycle industry in the city and granted it to a smart city development company. The Supreme People's Court held that this act effectively constituted the establishment and granting of a franchise for shared electric bicycles, which constituted the exercise of administrative power by administrative organs to restrict transactions. This lacked legality and rationality, and had the effect of excluding and restricting competition, thus constituting an abuse of administrative power to exclude and restrict competition prohibited by the Anti-Monopoly Law. Therefore, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff's claim and revoked the administrative act. Furthermore, the Supreme People's Court reiterated the basic requirement of "everything is permitted unless explicitly prohibited" in the shared electric bicycle industry, emphasizing that direct or indirect administrative control should not hinder operators from entering the market.

This case was handled by lawyers Huang Wei, Zhu Fan, and Yang Yi from Tian Yuan Law Firm. Despite the unfavorable circumstances of a first-instance judgment against the plaintiff, Tian Yuan represented its client in winning a second-instance judgment that reversed the initial ruling.

In recent years, the construction of a unified national market has been elevated to the level of a national strategy, with the implementation of a unified national negative list for market access and the elimination of administrative monopolies becoming important tasks. This case further elevates the "everything is permitted unless explicitly prohibited" market access requirement from enforcement action to judicial ruling, providing a benchmark for courts nationwide to handle similar cases. For market entities, this judgment also provides important guidance for enterprises to strive for free and unimpeded market access, especially in terms of the standards for identifying administrative monopoly behavior and judicial remedies, forming valuable practical experience.