Abstract:
It is undeniable that data, targeted at efficient circulation and maximized utilization, has evolved into a new-type asset with enormous latent value. Clarifying the logic of ownership of rights and interests attached to data constitutes a fundamental prerequisite for ensuring the orderly and dispute-free flow of data. Nevertheless, an analysis of the manifestations of existing judicial practice in determining data ownership reveals notable normative gaps in the underlying legal framework guiding judicial practice, including the undefined scope of protection for data rights and interests, ambiguous elements for establishing such rights and interests, and defective rules governing the priority hierarchy of data rights and interests, all of which are in urgent need of rectification. Recognizing the optimizing function and applicability of the “bundle of rights” theory to the rules for confirming data ownership, this paper embeds the theory into the systematic construction of improving the order of data rights and interests ownership. It takes the possession of “bundled rights” as the criterion for establishing the elements of data rights and interests, the confirmation of “binding bundle points” as the prerequisite for incorporating new types of data rights and interests into the scope of legal protection, and the construction of a “right spectrum” as the solution to the unclear logic of data rights and interests ownership and defective priority hierarchy. In doing so, a comprehensive, clear, operable and compliant institutional system is formulated to fill the aforementioned normative gaps with institutional remedies