Altogether 158 data products have passed government review after Shanghai implemented a new set of regulations aimed at recognizing and protecting the intellectual property rights associated with data-driven innovations in early December, the Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration (SIPA) said on Dec 24.
Notably, 74 of these products have been successfully listed for trading on the Shanghai Data Exchange, with the first transaction involving a staggering 100 million yuan ($13.7 million) in pledged financing.
SIPA and the Shanghai Municipal Data Bureau recently jointly issued the city's interim measures for IP registration and evidence preservation of data products, which became effective on Dec 8, marking the city's latest progress regarding protecting the rights of IP regarding data products.
The concept of "IP of data products" refers to the rights held by individuals, legal entities or nonlegal entities over data resources that have been legally acquired and subsequently processed and innovated upon to create intellectual assets with commercial value, experts said. It usually includes their rights over data processing collections, data processing products and data technical algorithms.
As an emerging factor of production, data is becoming an important source of value creation, and the confirmation and registration of its ownership are important, said Yu Chen, deputy director of SIPA.
"We facilitated the formulation of the interim measures and carried out the reviews and management of the IP registration regarding data products with high standards, aiming to accumulate experience and explore new paths for nationwide practice in the future, and promote the orderly circulation and rational use of the factors of data," Yu said.
Shanghai's regulations carried several unique features compared with similar initiatives in other provinces and cities across the country. For example, Shanghai stands out as the only region among the 17 sites involved in the pilot to conduct substantive reviews of the IP attributes of data products to be registered.
"The substantive reviews focused on whether the data products involved substantive processing and intellectual innovations, and whether there is an application scenario," said Xu Shang, head of the division of strategic planning at SIPA, adding that Shanghai has established a specialized team of nearly 100 inspectors of data product IPs to ensure rigorous and authoritative assessments.
"Shanghai's approach not only responds to market players' needs for registration of tradeable data processing products and services, but also avoids disputes...over whether original data collection has IP rights. In particular, Shanghai is so far the only region in the country that has included data technical algorithms in registrations, which meets the urgent needs of data enterprises," Xu said.
In a bid to create a better business environment, Shanghai has opted not to impose preregistration evidence and notarization requirements, thereby reducing the time and financial costs for applicants, said the administration.
"The ultimate goal of registration is to facilitate data circulation and transactions," Xu added.
Unlike other pilot regions that issue registration certificates under the names of regional IP protection centers, service centers, research institutes or data trading companies, Shanghai uniquely presents registration certificates under the authority of SIPA. This approach has attracted several enterprises hailing from elsewhere, seeking the authoritative certification provided by governmental bodies.
Recently, the Shanghai Data Exchange, in collaboration with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's branches in Shanghai and Wuhan, Hubei province, finalized the first data product IP pledge financing case in Shanghai, securing 100 million yuan in bank credit. The core asset involved in this financing is the IP of a Wuhan-based company's data platform, which provides one-stop book information query and visual analysis for the publishing industry.
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