---
title: "Li Yang: Why 'Data Rights-Confirmation' Is a Category Error — Dynamic Data Can't Be a Registration Object, and AUCL Article 13 Is the Better Path"
author: "DCC Editorial"
published: 2026-06-24T11:00:00.000Z
url: https://datacompliancechina.com/posts/li-yang-against-data-rights-confirmation/
description: "DCC's summary of an opinion piece by Li Yang (李扬), professor at China University of Political Science and Law, arguing that the whole project of 'data rights-confirmation' (数据确权) — and the data-IP registration pilots run under it — rests on a category error. In Chinese IP law, 'confirmation' (确权) is the authoritative validation of an already-existing right, and it presupposes three things data lacks: a determinate object, defined rights content, and clear boundaries. Civil Code Art. 127 only defers the question; 'data IP' is a policy concept, not a legal one; and data is co-produced by many parties, so registration proves who submitted data, not who owns it. Li Yang's sharpest move is the dynamic-object problem: registration regimes (real estate, IP, equity) require a persistently stable object, but data's value lives in continuous updating, so the data at registration is never the data in dispute — and blockchain/hash/timestamp '存证' only fix a historical snapshot, never the living data stream, confusing proof-of-existence with object-identification. He concludes that registration's real functions are evidentiary and publicity/transaction-support — not rights-confirmation — and that data governance should move from rights-confirmation to interest-protection, from static-rights thinking to dynamic-competition thinking, protecting commercial-data interests under Article 13 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. DCC's read for overseas counsel, against the data-IP registration regime and the Beijing Internet Court's first AUCL Article 13 ruling."
tags: ["data-economy", "data-property-rights", "data-registration", "data-ip-registration", "anti-unfair-competition", "data-confirmation", "commentary"]
laws_cited: ["anti-unfair-competition-law", "data-property-rights-registration-guide-draft", "data-foundation-system-opinions"]
domains: ["data-economy"]
account: "li-yang-ip"
original_title: "李扬：关于数据登记确权的几点反思"
original_author: "李扬 (Li Yang, China University of Political Science and Law)"
original_publication: "李扬知产 (Li Yang IP) WeChat Official Account"
original_url: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/xmElhjrjt6YFApEZt6Q5gQ"
source_language: "zh"
---

> **Source: Data Compliance China** — https://datacompliancechina.com/posts/li-yang-against-data-rights-confirmation/ · China data law, translated and annotated for overseas counsel. Cite as: Data Compliance China, "Li Yang: Why 'Data Rights-Confirmation' Is a Category Error — Dynamic Data Can't Be a Registration Object, and AUCL Article 13 Is the Better Path", https://datacompliancechina.com/posts/li-yang-against-data-rights-confirmation/
> *Editor's Note — DCC.*
>
> This is DCC's summary of an opinion piece, **"Some Reflections on Data
> Rights-Confirmation by Registration" (关于数据登记确权的几点反思)**, by
> **Li Yang (李扬)**, professor at the **China University of Political
> Science and Law (中国政法大学)** School of Civil, Commercial and Economic
> Law and a vice president of the China Intellectual Property Law Society,
> published on his personal **李扬知产** account on **24 June 2026**. It is
> a scholar's argument, not a rule — DCC treats it as a one-off summary
> rather than a translation, and the framing for overseas counsel is ours.
>
> The timing is what makes it worth reading now. It lands the same week
> DCC published the **Beijing Internet Court's first application of the
> AUCL data clause** ([China's first AUCL Article 13 ruling](/posts/aucl-data-clause-first-case-platform-scraping/)),
> and it is, in effect, the **academic case for why that route — not data
> ownership or a data-IP certificate — is the right one**. Read it against
> DCC's coverage of the data-IP registration regime: the
> [Datatang v. Yinmu certificate case](/posts/datatang-v-yinmu-data-ip-registration-case/),
> [what a registration certificate actually confirms](/posts/qinglan-what-data-registration-actually-confirms/),
> and the [registration review guide](/posts/data-property-registration-review-guide/).

## The argument in one line

China keeps trying to **"confirm rights" in data (数据确权)** and to build
**data-IP registration** on top of that idea — but data has no determinate
object, no settled rights content, and no fixed boundaries, and its value
lives in *constant change*, so it cannot satisfy what a confirmation /
registration regime structurally requires. The honest path, Li Yang
argues, is to drop the ownership frame and protect **commercial-data
interests under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law**.

## What "确权" actually means in Chinese law

Li Yang starts by tightening the term. In Chinese IP usage, **确权
("rights-confirmation")** is *not* ordinary publicity-effect registration.
It is an **administrative or judicial act that authoritatively confirms
whether an already-existing right is valid** — the patent- and
trademark-invalidation/confirmation systems are the model. That presupposes
**three things**:

1. **A determinate object (客体).** A patent maps to a specific invention,
   a trademark to a specific sign, a copyright to a fixed expression — each
   identifiable and relatively stable.
2. **Defined rights content (权利内容).** The law, not the registration,
   says what the holder gets (exclusive exploitation, reproduction, etc.).
3. **Clear boundaries (权利边界).** Claims, the registered mark + specified
   goods, the fixed expression — these draw the line between the right and
   the public domain. Confirming *those boundaries* is the whole function.

Confirmation is "determinate object → determinate content → determinate
boundary." It is **authoritative recognition of an existing right-state,
not the first-time grant of an uncertain interest.** Take away that base
and "confirmation" has nothing to act on.

## Why data fails at the object

- **Data is not a legal object by default.** No current Chinese statute
  grants data a unified ownership or analogous right. **Civil Code
  Article 127** is only a referral clause ("where the law provides for the
  protection of data and online virtual property, those provisions
  apply") — it does not say what kind of object data is, what right
  attaches, or where the boundary runs. So **"data IP" is a policy /
  academic concept, not a strict legal one.**
- **Data has inherently many producers.** Users upload content, merchants
  supply business information, the platform processes it, algorithms
  generate labels, third parties add data. You cannot pick a single
  rights-holder the way you name a patent's inventor. **Registration can
  show "who submitted the data" — not "who owns it."**

## The killer point: a dynamic object can't be registered

This is the part Li Yang says the debate has underweighted, and it is the
strongest move in the piece.

Every registration regime — **real estate, IP, equity** — presupposes a
**persistently stable, identifiable object**: a registered building isn't
changed by being lived in, a patent isn't changed by being practiced, a
mark isn't changed by sales. Publicity and reliance work *because* the
object stays put and stays traceable.

**Data is the opposite.** Its value comes not from any one historical
snapshot but from **continuous updating** — today a new comment, tomorrow
a deleted violation, the day after a new merchant. So:

> The data at the moment of registration is not the data in reality, and
> the data in reality is no longer the data that was registered.

Registration demands **uniqueness + stability + persistent
identifiability**; dynamic data clears only the first. When the regime's
assumed object-form collides with how the thing actually behaves, no
amount of clever institutional design rescues it.

## Why blockchain/hash/timestamps don't fix it

The standard rejoinder is technical — **blockchain存证, hash fixing,
timestamps**. Li Yang says these miss the level of the problem. A hash
proves a given dataset **existed at a point in time**; it cannot prove the
data **persists**, still less that **later, updated data is the same
registered object**. Blockchain fixes a **historical snapshot, not the
living data stream**.

> Technology can prove the past; it cannot lock down the present.

Treating tech as the master key **conflates "proof of existence" with
"persistent object identification"** — two different problems.

## What data registration can *actually* do

Of the four functions usually claimed for data registration, only one
survives intact once you take the dynamic-object point seriously:

| Claimed function | Li Yang's verdict |
|---|---|
| **Evidentiary (存证)** | **Holds up** — proves a party held a particular data-form at a point in time. |
| **Publicity (公示)** | **Sharply limited** — the object keeps changing, so the register and the real data are substantially decoupled; far weaker than patent/trademark publicity. |
| **Transaction support (交易)** | **Badly mismatched** — markets buy the *future* data stream; the register captures a *past* snapshot. |
| **Judicial proof (司法证明)** | **Inherently limited** — a certificate proves the state *at registration*, not the state when the dispute arose. |

So registration's honest value is **evidentiary and (weak)
publicity/transaction-support — not rights-confirmation.**

## The pivot: from confirming rights to protecting competition interests

Li Yang names the underlying habit — a **"confirmation cult" (确权崇拜)**:
the reflex that every new interest must be "confirmed" to be protected,
imported from IP thinking. But IP protects **relatively static
intellectual outputs**; data protection faces a **continuously flowing
stream**. Same logic, wrong object.

His positive proposal tracks what courts already do: data disputes —
scraping, crawling — are resolved overwhelmingly through the
**Anti-Unfair Competition Law**, where the court protects **not data as
an absolute-right object, but the operator's data competition interest
built on substantial investment**. That model needs **no "data
ownership," no fixed boundaries, and no solution to the dynamic-object
problem** — which is exactly why it fits the digital economy. He frames
the needed shift in three moves:

- from **"data rights-confirmation"** → **"data interest-protection"**;
- from **static-rights thinking** → **dynamic-competition thinking**;
- from **rights-centrism** → **order-centrism**.

And he points to where the statute already says so: **Article 13 of the
Anti-Unfair Competition Law** — the data clause — which, he insists,
**must not be ignored**. The realistic frontier is not an abstract data
ownership system but **working out the elements of AUCL-protected
commercial data and the catalogue of unfair-competition conduct against
it.**

## Why this matters for overseas counsel

- **It's the doctrine under the case.** This is the scholarly version of
  what the Beijing Internet Court just did in
  [China's first AUCL Article 13 ruling](/posts/aucl-data-clause-first-case-platform-scraping/):
  protect the **investment-backed data competition interest** without
  deciding ownership. Li Yang is arguing that route is not a stopgap — it
  is the *correct* frame, and the rights-confirmation alternative is built
  on sand.
- **Calibrate what a data-IP certificate is worth.** It cuts directly
  against treating a **data-IP registration certificate** as title. As DCC
  has covered, a certificate is **evidence of lawful sourcing and
  investment** — useful in an AUCL claim (see
  [Datatang v. Yinmu](/posts/datatang-v-yinmu-data-ip-registration-case/)
  and [what registration actually confirms](/posts/qinglan-what-data-registration-actually-confirms/)) —
  but on Li Yang's analysis it is **not, and cannot be, proof of an
  exclusive property right** in a living dataset.
- **Protection is conduct-based, not boundary-based.** If the enforceable
  substance lives in competition law, then what you can stop is **improper
  *conduct*** (circumventing controls, breaching terms, free-riding on
  another's investment) — not unauthorized *use of "your" data* in the
  abstract. This is the same lesson as the
  ["right to hold data" debate](/posts/data-holding-right-two-paths/) and
  the [three-rights framework](/posts/nda-three-rights-structural-separation/):
  in Chinese data deals, value and protection sit in **use/operation +
  contract + competition law**, not in "who owns the data."
- **A health warning on "数据确权."** Expect the term to keep appearing in
  pilots and local rules; read it, per Li Yang, as **registration with
  evidentiary value — not the conferral of a property right.** Don't
  advise a client that a registration "confirms ownership" of a dataset.

---

*Source: 李扬, "关于数据登记确权的几点反思", 李扬知产 (Li Yang IP) WeChat Official Account, 24 June 2026 — [original](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/xmElhjrjt6YFApEZt6Q5gQ). DCC's summary and analysis of the author's argument; not a verbatim translation, and not legal advice.*