Competition as a Form of Exercising the Right to Entrepreneurial Activity: A Civilistic Aspect

The change in economic patterns, the emergence of new forms of entrepreneurship, and the diversification of production cause the need to create new mechanisms of legal regulation of relations and transformation of existing ones. One such mechanism is competition. The research solves the problems of legal regulation of the exercise of competition as a form of exercising the right to entrepreneurial activity and identifies and systematizes its limits and restrictions. The use of a system of logically grounded universal (dialectical, system approach, and determinism) methods allowed the authors to establish the regularities of competition development, distinguish the legal nature of similar phenomena, and systematize new scientific knowledge about competition. Using the mechanism of legal regulation of entrepreneurial activity as a form of exercising the right to conduct entrepreneurial activity, the study of the function of competition provides conclusions about the legal nature of competition and distinguishes the positive and negative factors of its existence. The authors established the correlation with the categories of good faith and bad faith competition and entrepreneurial activity. The signs of behavior qualifying it as a restriction of competition are formulated. The comparative analysis of restriction of competition and abuse of rights allowed the authors to draw conclusions about their nonidentity. Based on considering the influence of competition on public and private interests, the authors revealed the means of the mechanism of legal regulation of competition.