Research On The Obligation And Responsibility Of The Group Shopping Website

Online group shopping in recent years is a promising method of e-commerce model. itsrapidly development, brought tangible benefits to the majority of consumers, at the same time,Serious violations of legitimate rights and interests of consumers, trademark rights and otherrelated rights of the holder of the relevant. The causing of these problems has a closerelationship with group shopping websites. But our relevant laws and regulations for them isnot enough.For this reason and from the legislative perspective, the discusses on theregulatory issues to group shopping websites is very important and urgent.This article mainly select the point of obligations and responsibilities to talk about theregulatory to group shopping websites. Before the probe, based on the practical operation ofthe Online group shopping, the first need to define the legal status of the websites so as toclear with the legal relationship between consumers and businesses. In terms of the legalstatus of the websites, there mainly exist opinions from agent, broker, intermediary andcounter lessor. I agree with the opinion of intermediary and the group shopping website is aspecial intermediary.The group shopping website has the obligations to merchants,the holder of the relevantand the obligations to consumers. In particular,the obligations to merchants mainly includingtimely payment, and merchant’s trade secrets protection; And the obligations to the holder ofrelevant mainly reflected in the respecting and safeguarding the rights of them. In detail, wecan explain it by two terms, one is the website itself should respect not infringe the rights ofthe holder of relevant, that is “Omission obligations”, the other is the website should promisethat group-buying services businesses supplier on it should not Infringe trademark rights,enterprise name rights and other rights of the holder of relevant and once find infringingbehaviors, it should take the necessary measures to avoid the infringement. While theobligations of the group shopping website to the consumers could be divided into twocategories, namely payment obligations and accompanying obligations. The paymentobligations including sending consumer vouchers, and refunds to consumers, whileaccompanying obligations including audit the qualification of businesses, preservation ofrelevant transaction information, maintaining personal information of consumers andprotecting the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. Responsibility is the violation of the legal consequences of obligation, breach of certainobligations must bear the corresponding responsibility Correspond with obligations.Correspond with obligations, the responsibility of the group shopping website including theresponsibility to the merchants, the holder of relevant and the consumers. In terms ofresponsibilities for merchants, if group shopping website violate the payment obligations, itneed to assume continue payment even penal sum due to breach of contract responsibility.And if group shopping website infringe the trade secret of the merchants should respond forstopping infringement and compensation for damages. In terms of responsibility for theholder of the relevant, if the website itself infringe the trademark rights of the holder or otherrights of the holder of the relevant, shall bear corresponding responsibility, and if the holderrelevant provides evidence that merchants on the website have infringement behavior on thewebsite, but the website ignore the measures, the website shall bear together with themerchants the responsibilities for the expound section of damages.when the group shopping website fails to fulfill the payment obligation for the consumer,the group shopping website shall bear the responsibility to continue to fulfill obligations orrefund. If the website fails to fulfill the accompany obligations of auditing the qualification ofthe businesses, preservation of relevant transaction information and protecting the legitimaterights and interests of consumers causing consumers can not lead to a claim to the merchant,then the website shall be held responsible that merchants should have responsible toconsumers, including the "three guarantees" responsibility and liability for damages. if thewebsite fails to take reasonable measures, resulting in loss of consumers personal informationdisclosure, need to be liable for damages to consumers. If the website itself infringeconsumers personal information, it should stop infringe at soon and compensate for damages.