[author]XIONG Bingwan

[content]

*Author: XIONG Bingwan

Researcher at the Civil and Commercial Legal Science Research Center of Renmin University

Abstract: At the level of national policy expression, the "20 Data Articles"  takes "rights bundle" as the underlying observation perspective of various rights and interests on data, so as to deal with the complex symbiosis and interdependence of interests faced by data from the very beginning. However, at the level of legal doctrine and positive law expression, it is necessary to focus on the relationship between the generation and circulation of each group of data, demarcate the rights and claims in each group of data social relations from the key dimensions such as "the way in which the right holder has the right to act on the object of rights", and standardize the common and legitimate data rights into different levels of rights modules, so as to achieve standardized expression at the legislative level. On the basis of the dichotomy between the legal prior rights module of the information source subject and the data property rights module of the data processing subject, the latter module can be subdivided into the general property rights module of data and the modules of various sub-property rights. The general property right of data is the first and most complete form of right, including the right to hold, the right to use, and the power to dispose of it with operation as the core. The shape of each data sub-property rights module depends on the specific data circulation model.

Keywords: data rights, rights blocks, Entitlement module, statutory prior interests, Data Property Rights.

1. Problems and methods

On June 22, 2022, the 26th meeting of the Central Committee for Comprehensively Deepening Reform deliberated and adopted the Opinions on Building a Data Basic System to Better Play the Role of Data Elements (hereinafter referred to as the "Data 20 Articles"), emphasizing the need to explore and establish a modern property rights system that is consistent with the characteristics of data elements. At the national policy level, the "Data 20" decided to "jump out of the ownership mindset" and adopted a structural separation scheme of property rights with "rights bundle" or "rights collection" as the underlying observation perspective and cognitive logic, hoping to open up a new path for the development of China's data element market.

Indeed, data elements are obviously different from physical elements in terms of physical properties, production modes and utilization methods, and it is difficult to use "ownership" based on tangible objects as the conceptual basis. On the basis of the same piece of data, a close symbiosis and interdependence of interests between multiple subjects are formed. Fragmentation of power in data has been the norm since the beginning. Therefore, the legal narrative of attributing data to the "ownership" of a single subject obviously deviates from the real rights on the data, which only increases the burden of conceptual understanding. For example, even if we theoretically regard the subject of the information source as the owner of the data, we have to face the social reality that the economic value of information can only be generated through the digitization and large-scale utilization of the data processing subject, and the "ownership" of the subject of the information source needs to be hollowed out. This is because the owner needs to transfer various property utilization opportunities on the data to various data processing subjects as soon as the data is generated. This makes data ownership a hollow ball of power or an illusion of rights from the start.

It can be said that the symbiosis and interdependence of interests on top of data are the norm in this type of economic resource, and often accompany the entire life cycle of data. It is not so much that someone owns or has owned a piece of data, but rather that multiple subjects share various opportunities or powers on the data from the beginning of the data life cycle, whether it is active use, passive restriction, state maintenance, use value, or exchange value. It is in this sense that the "20 Data Articles" generally understand the various opportunities or powers on top of a piece of data as a bundle of rights (like a bouquet of flowers) or a collection of rights, and a kind of opportunity or the ability to divide and use as a block of rights (like a flower). Correspondingly, the data rights bundle has been divided into various rights blocks from the beginning, which are enjoyed by different stakeholders, but are hardly "owned" by a single entity. Therefore, the decision of the "Data 20" to shift from the concept of "ownership" to the perspective of "rights bundle" to understand the rights landscape on data resources is a pragmatic and inclusive policy choice. This helps to more accurately present the data rights and interests that can be claimed separately by various stakeholders in the bundle of rights on the same data.

However, the thinking at the level of legal doctrine and the expression of positive law is far from stopping. We also need to adopt a way that conforms to the thinking habits of legal professionals, and standardize the data rights and interests contained in the data rights bundle. In particular, it is necessary to select key dimensions to delineate the boundaries of data rights, and standardize data rights into data rights modules, so as to coordinate multiple interests on top of data in an orderly manner, and build a set of data rights system with descriptive power, explanatory power and sense of order. To this end, the following article first summarizes the basic principles and working ideas of data rights standardization, and then focuses on the determination and demarcation of various data rights and interests claims in combination with the typical data production and circulation relationship, so as to realize the standardized construction of data rights and interests.

2. Principles and Ideas for Standardization of Data Rights

In the living world, there is a high degree of diversity in the division of rights in physical property. The process of transformation from the world of life to the world of law is a process of standardizing important forms of rights into rights modules. Standardizing the many rights patterns on a scarce resource into multiple modules is similar to standardizing a set of LEGO toys into multiple module components, which has many practical uses. For example, (1) between the property owner and a stranger (more precisely, not a party to the transaction), property rights are treated to a high degree of standardization, especially as ownership. It succinctly declares to unspecified strangers that the property of the right holder shall not be infringed without permission. (2) When the third party is involved, it helps to save the cost of the third party to identify the information of the subject matter of the transaction (the type of law in the principle of property right and the content of the "right boundary" are law). (3) Between the parties to the transaction, it not only helps to save the cost of defining the subject matter of the transaction and avoids starting from scratch in each transaction, but also helps to make up for the incompleteness of the contract and solve the "unfinished matters" in the contract negotiation.

It is also necessary to standardize the rights in the social relationship between the holder and the counterpart of a specific right block, especially to delineate the boundaries of the rights block from a meaningful dimension, so as to make it clear in legal doctrine and positive law. The reason why it is necessary to insist on understanding data rights from the perspective of social relations is that even data claims are always based on the specific social interactions and interactions that occur in the process of data production and circulation, and are always relative to the counterparts in specific social relations. Only when it comes to various types of data social relations can the specific power of data rights and their exclusive effect against different subjects be clarified.

Standardizing data rights in the context of data production and circulation is helpful to present the rights on data more concisely and to carry out the segmentation and circulation of data rights bundles more efficiently, so as to form a stable order within the data rights bundles. These social relationships are far from being limited to the relationship between "the subject of the information source and the data processing subject", and should also include various relationships that may involve the claim of data rights and interests, such as "the data processing subject and the stranger", "between the parties to the data property rights transaction", "between the parties to the data property rights transaction and the third party", "between the data processor who cooperates with each other", and "between the person entrusted with the data processing and the third party".

In fact, some of the rights in the bundle or aggregate of data rights have been highly standardized, especially some of the legal prior rights carried on the data, such as the privacy rights, intellectual property rights and trade secrets of the information source subject. Or a higher degree of standardization can be done, such as property interests on anonymized data. These common rights blocks are well known and have relatively clear boundaries.

However, there are also a large number of rights claims in the data that have not been fully tested for time (such as the right to portability of the information source), or are still in a state of controversy (such as the expectation of the information source subject to demand a share of the advertising profits earned by the enterprise based on the traffic generated by the traffic generated by the information source), or have not yet occurred, and may even lack the empirical basis for standardizing it for a long time. This includes not only new types of statutory priority rights and interests related to the protection of personal information, but also data property rights and interests in the sense of factors of production. Therefore, in terms of thinking, the standardization of data rights should give priority to those more common and stable data social relations, and maintain and demarcate the more mature rights blocks in these relationships one by one, so as to form a stable and orderly rights block structure within the data rights bundle. The standardization of other rights segments needs to be gradually developed through a "retail" approach.

To standardize the relatively mature data rights blocks in the data rights bundle into rights modules, it is not only necessary to select important dimensions to accurately and coherently describe each rights module; Moreover, when deciding to recognize a rights module and delineate its boundaries in important dimensions, it is often necessary to make value judgments to properly balance the impact of the rights module on the interests of relevant parties, and promote the liberation of the productivity of data elements and the construction of new production relations of data elements.

In fact, existing studies have made useful attempts in this regard, and summarized the data rights modules that may be included in a data rights bundle from multiple perspectives. For example, the existing literature tends to divide the claims of various rights and interests of many legal entities on the same data into two large data rights modules: first, the "legal prior rights" of various information source subjects; The second is the "data property rights" of various data processing entities in the sense of data production factors, and on this basis, they are further subdivided into modules. However, whether it is the recognition of the right module, the selection of the module dimension, or the delimitation of a certain dimension, it is necessary to fully consider the particularity of the data element, including its non-consumption, reproducibility, economies of scale, by-product attributes, class-level differences and so on. Due to the differences in understanding of the data rights analysis framework and the understanding of the physical properties of data elements, there are great controversies in the recognition, dimensionality or demarcation of some key rights modules in the existing studies. The author now deals with the main data rights modules more systematically, and tests the strengths and weaknesses of the relevant module design in combination with difficult cases in practice.

3. Statutory prior rights and data property rights modules

Whether it is data generated incidentally by Internet enterprises in the course of providing services, or data specially generated for the direct purpose of collecting information about a specific source subject or a specific source subject, data production activities are usually the result of the cooperation of multiple parties. The subject of the source of information is indeed the creator of the data, although not the only or even the main creator. After all, the subject of the source of information consciously or unconsciously contributes the raw material of the information. This raw material has scarcity and trading value. Direct evidence is provided by the fact that data collectors who have the direct purpose of collecting and developing information on specific subjects pay explicit transaction consideration to the subjects of information sources.

In specialized explicit information transactions, the information source entity has a relatively full opportunity to conduct special negotiations with the data processing entity on the content and consideration of the transfer of the information for commercial use. However, as far as the data generated by Internet enterprises in the process of providing services to users (especially natural person users) is concerned, the information transactions in the process of data generation are largely hidden, and there are few opportunities for special negotiations between the parties on the transfer of opportunities for commercial use of information. Internet companies often use standard contract clauses to obtain the commercial value of information from the information source as much as possible in consideration of "providing free network services". Therefore, compared with contracts for the payment of explicit consideration, the incompleteness of such forms of contracts is higher, and the property benefit distribution clause and the personality benefit transfer clause need to be subject to more rigorous scrutiny in terms of distributive fairness and public ethics, respectively.

It can be said that both natural persons and non-natural persons not only have the expectation of gaining access to digital services when participating in digital economic activities, but also have the basic expectation that their subjectivity will be detracted by participating in digital economic activities. The maintenance of a natural person's subjectivity is mainly manifested in the protection of his or her personal freedom and dignity, and ensuring that the digital use of a natural person's information does not undermine the basic requirements of "being a human being". The maintenance of unnatural subjectivity is mainly manifested in the protection of the integrity and normal operation of the simulated subject, especially to ensure that the interests such as "intellectual property rights" and "trade secrets" related to its production and business activities are not detracted by digital use.

In terms of the various interests and expectations of all parties in terms of data, it is undoubtedly of great significance to give priority to the protection of the above-mentioned rights and interests of information source subjects, otherwise it will directly affect the confidence of the majority of information source entities to participate in digital economic activities and contribute information raw materials. These rights that require priority protection have been more abundantly stipulated at the level of positive law, which are the legal prior rights of the subject of the information source. As for the specific content of this rights module, it is not only affected by the identity of the information subject (natural person or non-natural person), but also may be different by the transaction mode of the opportunity to commercialize the information. On the basis of fully recognizing and protecting the statutory prior rights and interests, as will be commented below, in principle, the data property rights in the sense of production factors should be assigned to the data processing subjects, as will be the data property rights, unless there is a contractual agreement or justifiable reasons.

3.1 The legally-prescribed prior rights of the information source entity

From the perspective of the normative objective of the law to set up rights for information source subjects in terms of data, there is a clear difference between data with natural person information as content and data with non-natural person information as content. It is necessary to discuss the corresponding prior rights modules separately.

3.1.1. The prior personality rights of natural persons

The primary goal of the law in the empowerment of natural persons' information is to maintain the freedom and dignity of the human person, and to ensure that the digital use of natural persons' information does not undermine the requirements of modern civilization of "being human". Therefore, the prior personality rights module should be separated from the natural person data, including privacy rights and personal information rights and interests. Although the personality rights module is strongly confirmed by the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China and the Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China , it can still be divided and transferred for commercial use, and thus the abundance (personal freedom and sense of dignity) changes. It is worth noting that the various personality rights and interests claims of the subject of the information source are still based on the positive or passive non-use of the data by the right holder in some form. Correspondingly, within the prior personality rights module, we can standardize them into smaller rights modules from the dimension of the corresponding data utilization methods (or the ways in which each data rights subject has the right to act on the data object) of various rights claims, especially the rights modules such as prohibition of public use, prohibition of intrusion into the tranquility of life, state inspection, state maintenance, content reproduction, content migration and content destruction.

At the level of legal doctrine and the expression of positive law, these rights modules often appear in the form of the language of "so-and-so rights ", so as to facilitate understanding, memorization and dissemination. Among them, the right to privacy is corresponding to the prohibition of public use and prohibition of intrusion into the tranquility of life, that is, the rights of the information source subject to the data shall not be publicly used or advertisements shall not be pushed to it; Corresponding to the status check module is the right to query, that is, the claim to request the query of the information content on the digital carrier; Corresponding to the state maintenance module, there are mainly the right of correction and the right of preservation, that is, the claim to maintain the accuracy of the information contained in the data and the claim that the data is in a good storage state within a certain period of time; Corresponding to the content reproduction module is the right of reproduction, which the claim that the corresponding data is to be reproduced; Corresponding to the content migration module is the right to portability, which is the claim to migrate the corresponding data from one place to another in a convenient digital form; Corresponding to the content destruction module, the main ones are the right to delete and the right to be forgotten, that is, the claim that the existing data can disappear or be permanently destroyed within a certain range.

From the dimension of the data utilization method corresponding to these prior claims, we can not only form a panoramic understanding of the personality rights module, but also help to understand the "relationship between privacy rights and personal information rights and interests" that have plagued legal scholars for a long time. Chapter 6 of the Personality Rights Section of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China, entitled "Privacy Rights and Personal Information Protection", does not directly adopt the concept of "personal information rights and interests" later clarified by Article 1 of the Personal Information Protection Law, but generally regards "privacy rights" and "personal information rights and interests" as two types of civil rights that are juxtaposed with each other. Academics often juxtapose the two and believe that there is an intersection between them, but they have not yet found a thorough perspective. In fact, if we temporarily jump out of the current law on the use of the concept of "personal information rights" at the academic level, and use this concept rigorously in line with the context, we will gain a new perspective. Strictly speaking, the concept of "personal information rights and interests" only broadly expresses the object dimension to which the relevant rights and interests are directed, that is, the rights and interests claims made by individuals on top of "personal information". As to the way in which such interests act on the objective object of personal information, this concept does not provide any valuable content. As a complete concept of rights, in addition to specifying the object of a right, it is also necessary to indicate the ways in which the corresponding right holder can act on the object, such as the right to use construction land is to build on the land, the easement is to use the land, the homestead use right is to build a house on the land, and so on. In the same way, on top of the specific personal information contained in the data, the right holder can not only claim privacy, but also the right to privacy; It is also possible to request an inquiry, which is for the right of inquiry; It is possible to request that the status of accuracy be maintained, for the purpose of rectification; Reproduction can be requested, for the right of reproduction; Migration can be requested, for the right to portability; It is possible to request permanent deletion for the right to erasure; It is possible to request that it not be visible to the public on the Internet, but for the sake of the right to be forgotten.

Therefore, the right to personal information in the strict sense is not a concept that is parallel to the right to privacy, but a collective concept, which can be used to refer to various information rights and interests with substantive content, including the right to privacy, the right to inquiry, the right to copy, the right to portability, the right to delete, the right to be forgotten, and so on. It is not the right to personal information that is juxtaposed with the right to privacy, but the specific types of rights under this collective concept. On top of the same object of personal information, the subject of the information source may enjoy both the expectation of "information privacy disposal" and the expectation of broader information interests such as information inquiry, copying, portability, and deletion. The reason why the Civil Code treats "privacy" and "personal information protection" side by side, and is vague on the issue of "whether the personal information clause protects rights or interests", is, on the one hand, that it fails to describe the relevant rights and interests in terms of the way the right holder acts on the object; On the other hand, it is because the academic community and the legislature have not used this collective concept rigorously before, nor have they formed a consensus view on the specific types of rights that this concept can refer to, which needs to be deepened in the passage of time.

3.1.2. Prior property rights of non-natural persons

In contrast, the main goal of the law in the empowerment of non-natural persons is to provide economic incentives for those who actively establish and operate socio-economic organizations and carry out production activities, and to encourage people to actively carry out social and economic construction by recognizing and protecting the property rights and interests of the parties in various real or virtual existences, such as organizations, tangible objects, and virtual objects. Even if the law imagines social and economic organizations such as legal persons and unincorporated persons as "persons" and gives them "personality rights", such personality rights are mainly for the convenience of the construction of the doctrine system, and are still property rights and interests in essence, which are more similar to property rights and virtual property rights. The digitization of this information about non-natural persons, real or virtual, is also premised on the premise that it does not derogate from the prior property rights of the subject of the source of the information. Therefore, the prior property rights module should be separated from the data of non-natural persons.

As far as information about socio-economic organizations such as legal persons and unincorporated persons is concerned (such as online store transactions, logistics, reviews, and credit information), on the one hand, information source entities enjoy a number of rights similar to those of natural persons, including prohibition of public use (trade secrets), prohibition of over-limit use (trade secrets), status verification (right of inquiry), status maintenance (right of correction and preservation), reproduction of content (right of reproduction) and even destruction of content (right of deletion). The reason why the law gives priority to protecting these rights and interests is mainly to ensure the integrity and normal operation of the body of the proposed subject. On the other hand, these rights regarding the fictional personality are usually not related to human ethics and morality, but are mainly economic, so they are highly divisible and transferable, and there is no such thing as "inalienable". Regardless of whether it is an explicit information transaction with a data processing subject or an implicit information transaction, as long as the information source subject agrees, most of the above-mentioned rights modules can be transferred. Moreover, the subject of such information sources does not enjoy the special contractual rights granted to natural persons by articles 1022 and 1023 of the Civil Code (such as the right of unilateral termination based on legitimate reasons). For example, if the business review data processing platform and the merchants who use QR code ordering on the platform do not agree on the ownership of the property rights of the ordering data, then the platform has the ancillary obligations stipulated in paragraph 2 of Article 509 of the Civil Code, such as the obligation to allow merchants to query and copy past transaction information (especially if the merchants themselves do not keep an account book); However, if the Dianping Platform and the merchant expressly agree to exclude such contractual obligations on the premise of not violating the rules governing standard clauses, then such agreement should be respected even if the merchant's own account book is lost.

As far as information about objects or virtual objects is concerned (such as information about the driving performance of a particular brand of self-driving motor vehicle, or information about the trading of a particular stock), it is certain that the subject of the production and operation of the object enjoys a module of rights to which the relevant "intellectual property rights" and "trade secrets" are not diminished by digitization. In terms of the ways in which the rights holders can act on the data, these rights are mainly expressed in the form of prohibitions on public use (trade secrets), prohibitions on over-exploitation (copyrights, patents, trade secrets, etc.), prohibitions on publication and dissemination (publication and distribution rights), and prohibitions on manipulation (adaptation rights), among other rights. However, these modules of rights enjoyed by the subject of the source of information are mainly passive-defensive, that is, preventing the intellectual property and trade secrets behind the production of the object from being diminished by the digital extraction of the information on the object, and do not relate to the rights of maintenance of the state and positive use necessary for the preservation of the subject's existence.

In particular, in many scenarios, the collection of such information is carried out in a non-transactional context, with neither explicit nor implicit information transactions between the subject of information collection and the subject of the source (for example, the brake braking data of a specific brand of motor vehicle collected by a navigation application, the information on the sales and service life of various brands of mobile phone batteries collected by a telecommunications operator through the telecommunication network, etc.). The subject of the source of the information, apart from the requirement that statutory prior property rights are not infringed (including the highly scenario-based property right to be free from unfair competition), does not have a legitimate cause to assert a right to state maintenance and active exploitation on the data, unless there is a special agreement between the parties. In addition, as with the rights module for subjects of information sources such as legal persons and unincorporated organizations, prior rights in information about tangible or virtual objects are primarily property-based and can in principle be divided and alienated without special contractual rights.

3.1.3 Data property rights of the subject of the information source?

Having sorted out the internal structure of the prior rights module, we need to discuss another important issue: can the subject of the information source also claim a share in the data property rights in the sense of a factor of production, based on his or her contribution of informational raw material to the production of the data? If so, should it be taken directly from the data property rights module?

This is both a matter of legal doctrinal concern and one that was the focus of discussion during the drafting process of the "20 Data Articles". There is a view that, in addition to the legal prior rights and interests, further property rights in data should be granted to the subject of the source of information through the prior provisions of the law. This is not only morally fair, but also economically efficient. This was because it would help to achieve individualized pricing of information (especially information on natural persons) and thus enhance the efficiency of information transactions.

It is worth noting that the documentation of information on digital carriers is a productive process and often a contract-based process of interaction. Information that exists in a non-digital form (such as brain memory or paper-based information) before it is captured and digitally documented by the information-gathering agent has little economic value in the sense of being a factor of production. By the same token, it is meaningless to have a digital carrier without information content. Therefore, it is still necessary to return to two basic contractual rule of law dimensions to judge the attribution of data property rights: One is the contractual agreement between the subject of the information source and the subject of the information collection; And the other is the moral legitimacy and reasonableness of measures to intervene in the terms of the agreement on the attribution of data property rights.

In specialized explicit information transactions, the subject of the information source and the subject of the information collection generally make an explicit agreement on the property rights in the data produced by the two parties in cooperation, that is, the latter acquires the property rights in the data on the condition that it pays an explicit consideration to the former. As long as the contractual agreement respects the former's statutory prior rights and interests, there is no need to specially configure a part of the data property rights module for the former through mandatory norms. This is because the subject of the information source has usually already made a rational judgement on the value of the commercial use of its information and the expected return through contractual negotiations, which largely contributes to the personalized pricing of information and the efficiency of information transactions.

However, in incidental hidden information transactions, the subject of the information source not only lacks the opportunity for specialized consultation with the subject of the collection, but is not even aware of the issue of the return of the information raw material he or she contributes, and usually does not have the mental expectation of a share of the property rights in the data elements. Therefore, it is easy for people to have intuitive doubts about the fairness of such transactions, and then advocate the adoption of mandatory norms for the information source subject to specifically allocate a portion of data property rights. However, when the subject of the information source contributes information raw material in an implicit transaction based on a form contract, he or she generally also receives "free network or technical services" as an implicit consideration at the same time. Therefore, only when there are good reasons to believe that the implicit consideration and the value of the information raw materials are clearly unequal, the law is necessary to rectify the unequal distribution of property rights through the mandatory granting of a portion of the data property rights of the information source subject of the format terms. However, this is not an easy task. In particular, the subject of the information source usually has neither the tools to digitize the information into data production factors, nor the clear expectation of obtaining data property rights beyond the "free internet service". Therefore, even if the form contracts provided by the information-gathering subjects often provide for the unilateral enjoyment and exercise of data property rights, there are no legally sufficient grounds for mandatory redistribution.

As to whether the information in the hidden trade is efficiently traded through personalized pricing, it is true that the value of the commercial exploitation of the social address book information and voice information of ordinary people is different from that of the corresponding information of well-known people. If different users are consulted separately, it is likely that different consideration will need to be paid, and some studies have even given quantitative results on the difference in the value of data information between the rich and the poor. The phenomenon of explicit transactions in which natural person voice information collection, training and development companies offer prices based on the social popularity of the information subject is direct evidence of this. What is often overlooked, however, is that in an ideal implicit transaction, online platforms should also adopt individualized pricing for online services provided to natural person users to be consistent with the efficient use of online services. After all, the same web services bring different economic values to ordinary people and well-known individuals. Differentiated pricing can help enhance the efficiency of the utilization of online services, and celebrities have the willingness and ability to accept a higher price for their services. Therefore, when arguing for "granting data property rights to natural persons who are the source of information, thus helping to improve the efficiency of the use of personal information", one would also conclude that "granting online platforms the opportunity to differentiate pricing for natural person users, thus helping to improve the efficiency of the use of the platform's service ". In this way, the efficiency-enhancing effects of personalized pricing of information raw materials and personalized pricing of platform services can be roughly offset. In other words, when celebrities access online services that are more valuable to them at an equal price (often zero consideration), they should also cede the digital property value of their personal information to online platforms at an equal price (also often zero consideration). This not only helps to achieve fairness in the transaction between the celebrity and the online platform, but also saves the complex process of valuing the consideration between the two parties, and is a practice that is more in line with the requirements of social efficiency.

Of course, this does not mean that the information source subject is completely unjustified in sharing the dividends of the data property outside of the direct transaction consideration. After all, as mentioned earlier, whether the raw information material contributed by the information source subject can be offset by the free network service is not yet known under the existing market valuation mechanism. Forcing the information source subject to share the data element property dividend does help to satisfy the public's simple sense of fairness. After all, the fundamental goal of a modern property rights system lies in the universal blossoming of human nature, and commercial development should promote the happiness of the general public as a social convert. However, even if in this grand narrative sense there is a justification to let the subject of the information source to share the data property dividends, it cannot simply cut a part of the data property right module to a large number of highly dispersed information source subjects through the first distribution. This is because it is unlikely that such dispersed and small benefits can be accomplished through high-cost individually negotiated specialized transactions, which would still end up as doctrinal posers due to the bulk processing of form clauses. In contrast, a programme of collecting data property taxes from data-processing subjects in an appropriate manner and using them to enhance the quality of digital life in society as a whole, thereby completing the secondary distribution, would be a better institutional choice.

3.2 Data property rights of data processing subjects

After clarifying the legal prior rights module of the subject of the information source, we continue to understand the data property rights module and its internal subdivision structure in terms of the dimensions of "the manner in which the subject of the rights has the right to act on the data object and the limits thereof". In order to understand the various layers of rights modules within the data property rights module, we may start by observing the initial data production process. Through human and material inputs, data processing subjects digitize a variety of information that was originally in a diffuse state, forming data resources in the sense of production factors. Although the information raw materials for the production of data come from other subjects or natural states, it is reasonable to identify the collector of dispersed information as the original acquirer of the data property rights module, whether from the perspective of Locke's theory of value of labour, from the consideration of incentives for the production of data factors, or from the observation of the efficiency of the circulation of raw materials for information. Theoretical circles have also gradually formed a high academic consensus on this point.

Although the complex symbiosis and interdependence of interests in data does not lend itself to the identification of a single subject with full "data ownership", this complexity does not prevent the general recognition in doctrine and practice of a general right to property in the data held by the subject of the original collection of information and generation of data (the subject of the original data processing) and its standardization into a new module of property rights, with full respect for and protection of the legally prior rights of the subject of the source of the information. Regarding the designation of this module of rights, various options have been proposed in recent studies, including the author's proposal of a general property right to data. And it is used here. It can be said that the general property right to data is the first and most complete type of right within the module of data property rights, which includes the right to hold, the right to use and the right to dispose of with the core of operation. In the section on "Data Property Rights System", "20 Data Articles" proposes to "separately define the legal rights of each party involved in data production" and "structural separation of data property rights". And in Article 7, it stresses the need to "fully protect the legitimate rights and interests of data (information) sources ...... "Reasonable protection of the rights and interests of data processors in the independent control of data held in accordance with the law" is precisely the confirmation of the general property rights in data enjoyed by data processing subjects or data holders at the national policy level.

However, on the one hand, the general property right to data is, after all, conceptually and content-wise different from ownership rights based on corporeal objects, and it is crucial to clarify the conceptual content of this module of rights and to standardize the powers embedded in it. The so-called "general property right in data" refers to the general recognition of the property right in the sense of factors of production in respect of the resulting data, whether personal or non-personal, public or non-public, published or unpublished, on the basis of the general input of information collection by the subject of data processing. On the other hand, in addition to their own use of the data, the original data processing subjects may, on the basis of an agreement or a legal cause, cede the entire general property right in data, or cede a part of it in a divided manner and form corresponding sub-modules of property rights in data. These sub-modules, together with the module of the general property right in data, constitute the entire module of the data property right as opposed to the the statutory prior rights of the subject of the information source. At the doctrinal and statutory level, the key is to fully investigate and summarize the common grounds for alienation, the business models for alienation, and the patterns of alienated rights, in order to accurately express the manner and limits to which the holders of the sub-modules of rights are entitled to act in relation to the corresponding data. To this end, we turn to the next question.

4. Module on general property rights in data

The data property right enjoyed by the original data-processing subjects and their data overall successors are the broadest in content, but are distinctly different from the composition of the powers of ownership of corporeal objects. After all, the property owner is subject to the constant constraints of multiple legal prior rights and interests from the subject of the source of the information, and does not have the right of complete control and absolute exclusion. Recent articles have proposed concepts such as "limited right of control" and "limited right of use" to reflect the strength of the data holder's control over the data he/she holds. However, there is no systematic understanding of the dimensions and strength of the limited nature of this module of data property rights. For this reason, we continue to further define and delimit general data property rights in terms of the ways in which the right holder is entitled to act on the data.

4.1 Power of the general data property right

The enjoyment of the general property right in data by the original data processor and its data overall successors, in addition to being relative to the subject of the source of the information, is also significant in social relations between strangers, or non-transacting parties. In a relationship towards the subject of the source of the information, the subject of the data processing may refuse a request from the subject of the source of the information for the allocation of the property right in the data. In contrast, in a relationship towards strangers, the person with a general property right in data has the right to hold the data independently, to use the data for his or her own purposes and to dispose the data by means of external business operations, and enjoys the privilege of obtaining income as a result of the data being held independently, used for his or her own purposes, or operated externally. In the absence of a contractual agreement or legal reasons, strangers shall not arbitrarily intrude or interfere with the data holder's activities of self-control, self-use and external operation of data. This is despite the fact that, as discussed later, some data (especially open and public data) have a significantly stronger public characteristic than corporeal property and need to be subject to broader requirements of statutory fair use.

Although it is not appropriate to adopt the concept of "ownership" in data, the clarification of the exclusive holding power, the using power and the disposing power centred on operation of the general property right module of data in the aforementioned sense will also help to achieve a high degree of standardisation of the general property right in data. At the national policy level, the "20 Data Articles", after thinking out of the box of data ownership, does not construct a concept such as "general property rights in data" to unify the property rights enjoyed by the subjects of original data processing, instead, it expresses such property rights in Article 3 as a policy through the externalising them as the right to hold, the right to use and the right to operate, i.e., "the right to hold data resources", "the right to use and process data" and "the right to operate data products". The prefixes "resource", "processing" and "product" are added before "hold", "use" and "operate" mainly to emphasise the significance of the allocation of the right to control data as a kind of economic resource at the policy level, to highlight the common way of self-use of data by right holders at the practical level, and to reflect the customary commercial terminology of the right holders in operating data externally at the level of business management, but are less relevant to the question of whether the data has been anonymised or whether it is a standardised product. At the level of legal doctrine and statutory expression, the significance of these qualifying terms is not obvious and it is still necessary to subsume them in the form of "rights" under the concept of overarching rights such as the "general property right in data". As for the privilege of the right holder to obtain income from autonomous holding, self-use and external operations, it can be said to be a proper meaning of the general property right enjoyed by the subject of data processing, and it is not necessary to classify it as a fourth type of power. Article 7 of "20 Data Articles" also explicitly emphasises the full protection of the data processor's prerogative to obtain benefits.

This highly standardised data rights module facilitates the concise and clear presentation of the status of rights holders' rights to any stranger, except the subject of the information source, the holder of the contractual data property right and the legal fair user. No stranger is allowed to access, copy, alter, destroy or delete the data at will (the right to hold), interfere with the right holder's self-use of the data (the right to use), or prevent the right holder from operating the data externally by transferring it in its entirety, licensing it, creating a guarantee, or investing by it (the right to dispose of the data with centered on operation). Similar to the implication of the right to possession of tangible objects, the right to hold data is both a descriptive and a normative concept, emphasizing the right holder's autonomy to exclude intrusion or interference by others. Article 7 of "20 Data Articles" emphasizes that "reasonably protect the rights and interests of data processors in exercising independent control over data held in accordance with the law", which is precisely a confirmation of this power in a normative sense. Operating data resources externally through various means is of course the core content of the right to dispose of data, but it is not the whole of it. Because, if it doesn’t violate the statutory prior rights of the subject of the information source (such as "separate consent") and the obligation of data preservation or destruction imposed by the state based on the consideration of public interests, the right holder can independently decide whether to destroy data physically. Of course, it is precisely because of these constraints that the right to dispose of data differs markedly from that of the owner of a tangible object.

Under current law, the owner of a general property right in data enjoys defensive and retrospective rights to request a stranger who commits an infringing act to stop the infringement, remove the obstruction, eliminate the danger, return the data, restore it to its original state, and compensate for the loss, based on fragmented provisions such as article 179 of the Civil Code, article 43 of the Cybersecurity Law, and articles 51 and 52 of the Data Security Law. However, due to the replicability of data, infringement may take the form of either infringement of the data itself, the use of a copy of the data after unauthorised copying, or the integrated appropriation of the storage hardware and data. Thus, the right holder may not only exercise defensive and retrospective rights based on the data held by the right holder, but may also demand the deletion of the copies of the data held by the infringer and enjoin the infringer's chain of infringement against other persons. As long as the data is not irretrievable or returnable, the controller may choose a remedy other than "compensation for the damage" aimed at restoring control. Even if the infringer discloses the unauthorised data, control may be restored by dealing with the open channel. In this regard, data is distinctly different from tangible objects and intellectual property (especially trade secrets), and is characterised by the ease of implementation of the technology for restoring autonomous control and the plurality of holding subjects.

4.2 Parallel property rights of collaborative data processors

As a result of replicability, in some cases the data generated are captured and held in parallel by several collaborative processing subjects in a synchronised manner. In a social relationship vis-à-vis strangers, in the same way as independent subjects of original data processing, each parallel holder should enjoy a general property right in the data, with the right to exclude external interference or intrusion. However, among parallel holders, it is more complicated to determine the data property rights of each parallel holder. While it is true that leading data processing companies have more incentives and capabilities to minimise such property disputes through prior agreement, in practice there are still a large number of co-processing entities that do not have sufficient incentives and capabilities to make prior arrangements. In this regard, it is necessary to distinguish between the contractual purposes for which parallel holders collaborate in the production of data, and to judge their respective ownership. In some cases, the production of data is the direct purpose for which the parallel holders are collaborating with each other; in other cases, it is a by-product of their collaboration in fulfilment of other direct purposes.

4.2.1 Parallel Property Rights in Data Proprietary Goods

Where multiple data processing subjects cooperate in producing data as a direct purpose, the subjects may have held the collected data in parallel in the course of the collaborative production process. For example, a bus company cooperates with a data technology company to collect real-time arrival data of bus exclusively for the purpose of developing data products or services such as real-time arrival enquiry of public transport vehicles, and multiple remote sensing satellite operators cooperate technically to collect meteorological data exclusively for a specific space, and so on. In these cases, if there is no agreement or unclear agreement on the allocation of property rights in data, all parties should enjoy the right to hold and use data in parallel, and may hold and use the data on their own.

4.2.2 Parallel property rights in data by-products

When multiple enterprises collaborate to provide the same network service, each enterprise, while completing the task of division of labour, incidentally obtains the corresponding data by-products, such as the data formed in the process of collaboration between Cainiao and Fengchao in the process of carrying out the main business of express delivery. In order to ensure that the goods are delivered as promised, Cainiao and Fengchao hold the information on the logistics of the goods in multiple links (such as the information on the time of sending, transferring, arriving at the cabinet and picking up the goods), and therefore in fact hold the data containing such information in the meantime. For both parties, the core of the transaction activity is expected to express the business of collaborative completion. However, with the improvement of data mining capabilities and the richness of the exploitation methods, the economic value of the data by-products generated in the process of express delivery business is becoming increasingly prominent (e.g., consumer pick-up time data can be used to analyse the commuting patterns of people in a particular neighbourhood, which can help to improve advertising). When there is no agreement or the agreement is unclear, its property rights become a major dispute between the parties.

Picture 1. Schematic diagram of logistics data generation for express lockers of Cainiao and Fengchao

Such data elements are clearly distinguishable from physical and intellectual property. This is not only because of their replicability, which allows them to be captured, held in parallel and used by multiple subjects, but also because of their by-product properties. More importantly, the economic value (especially the exchange value) of the data held by one subject is subject to the manner in which the parallel holders exercise their rights. Parallel holders may use the data for their own purposes in the same or different ways, but it is very difficult for them to operate the data externally through exclusive licences, and they may almost lose the economic value of the data they hold because of the free and open sharing behaviour of other parallel holders. Such a phenomenon is unlikely to occur in the field of physical and intellectual property.

However, it is not necessary for the law to allocate exclusive data property rights to any party in a social relationship between parallel holders, given the following considerations. First, in terms of productivity, denying one party a property right to the exclusion of the other party will not have a negative incentive effect, as the generation of data is only a by-product of the main business. Second, from the perspective of equitable distribution, there is no need to set up a legal right subject and enforcement boundary for data by-products, as the specialised inputs of each collaborating producer for the data by-products are unclear and lack clear commercial expectations. Third, from the perspective of enforcement costs, if one subject is recognised as having exclusive general property rights in data according to a certain standard, a set of enforcement and regulatory mechanisms will need to be constructed. On the contrary, without exclusive empowerment among the co-producers, there will be no corresponding enforcement costs and dispute resolution costs. Fourth, for any counterparty that deals with a parallel holder, the counterparty will incur vesting costs regardless of which parallel holder the rights are assigned to. Moreover, the status of rights attribution may also change as business scenarios change, and the counterparty will need to incur ongoing verification costs. Relatively speaking, it is better to ensure the cleanliness of the traded data rights through contractual mechanisms such as liquidated damages.

5. Data sub-property rights block

5.1 Reasons for the acquisition of data sub-property rights blocks

Whether it is an intended contractual transaction or a statutory cause of alienation, a portion (or even the entire block of data rights) will be separated from the general property rights module of data to satisfy the commercial needs of the parties or the needs of the legal user. However, it is legally necessary to make a strict distinction between the cause of the secondary acquisition and the result of the secondary acquisition. While the question of whether and how to standardise a particular block of data rights acquired by inheritance should be analysed in relation to the cause of the acquisition, the cause of the acquisition itself should not be mistaken for a block of data rights. For example, the statutory "compulsory licence right" against the data monopoly subject is a cause of acquisition, the essence of which is that the data monopoly subject is obliged to enter into a compulsory contract with the statutory subject, and the statutory subject has the prerogative of compelling the data monopoly subject to enter into a licensing contract with it, but lacks the opportunity to act directly on a specific property object. It is only after the subject of the data monopoly has legally contracted with the counterparty and fulfilled the obligation to deliver the data that the counterparty holds the data in consequence and acquires the corresponding right to use the data.

Compulsory licences in the causal context are functional substitutes for voluntary contractual acts in terms of the legal legitimacy of secondary acquisitions and the basis for liability for wrongful acquisitions, but do not in themselves constitute a block of data property rights. Only the right to use data in the resultant sense is necessary to evaluate whether and how it should be standardised as a data rights module. Before discussing the standardisation of data property rights blocks, let us first sort out the common forms of data rights block division and alienation in practice.

5.1.1 Agreed-upon blocks of data rights

In the case of intentional transactions, the owner of a general property right in data may, in principle, make highly customised cuts and agreements with the transferee on the blocks of data rights to be transferred, as long as this is without prejudice to prior statutory interests. The transferor may either transfer the entire general property right in the data or a part of the use or transaction value of the data: (1) In an overall transfer, the transferee replaces the transferor as the new owner of the general property right in the data, and the transferee has the right to request the transferor to delete the back-up data. In a transaction aimed at transferring the overall assets of a data-driven enterprise, in addition to the transferor's obligation to transfer fixed asset equipment, such as servers, the transferor is also required to judge whether it has an obligation to transfer the equipment's memory data in conjunction with the terms of the agreement, the transaction price and other factors. (2) The transfer of value-in-use is rich in form, diverse in manner and multiple in purpose. The form can be either the transfer of ordinary data use right, or exclusive data use right or exclusive data use right, or at the same time give the transferee the right to sub-licence the data; the way can be either direct provision of data transmission interface, or to provide data copies, or privacy computing, on-site use, or remote access to a variety of options in line with the purpose of the transaction between the two parties; the purpose of both can be In exchange for licence royalties, or as an investment in equity instruments. (3) The forms of transfer of transaction value are equally rich, either in the form of the transfer of the right to operate the data itself, i.e., the owner of the general property right in the data transfers the right to operate the data externally, so as to allow the counterparty to obtain the general right to operate the data, the exclusive right to operate the data or the exclusive right to operate the data, or in the form of the general property right in the data as a form of encumbered property, in particular, the establishment of a security right in the data. In the case of a security-based transfer, regardless of the specific form of the security over the data, the security right holder will generally wish to exclusively acquire the realisation value of the corresponding data in future transactions and to prevent the guarantor from re-assigning its property rights in the data to third parties during the term of the security.

5.1.2 Legally acquired blocks of data rights

Although general property rights in data are the most broadly empowered block of data property rights, this type of economic resource is more readily accessible to and controlled by a small number of data processors, and generally has a more public character than corporeal property rights. As a result, the owner of a general property right in data is subject to more positive use or negative restriction of use claims from other subjects. In addition to statutory prior interest claims, right holders are subject to free and fair use claims by others for publicly available data and compulsory licensing claims by competitors for monopolised data. While the statutory prior rights and interests of the subject of the information source constitute a continuous and permanent limitation on the general property right in data, the limitations imposed by fair use and compulsory licensing take the form of statutory exceptions based on the premise of "reasonableness of use" and the "reason for compulsory licensing". After all, the establishment of statutory data access rules is primarily a matter of establishing a statutory exception. After all, statutory data access rules were established primarily to address the flow of data that is difficult to achieve through voluntary negotiation and for purposes of significant socio-economic public order. Accordingly, the sub-property rights to data acquired in this way should be limited to the right to use the data on the one hand, and generally speaking, the right to use ordinary data can satisfy the demand for use, and it is not necessary to grant the right to use exclusively or exclusively; on the other hand, the use of the data, the amount of data and even the cost of the data are limited by the statutory establishment of the objectives.

The rational use of data is logically similar to the rational use system of adjacent real estate, copyright and personal information stipulated in Chapter 7 of the Property Law of the Civil Code, Article 24 of the Copyright Law, Article 999 of the Civil Code and Article 13 of the Personal Information Protection Law. On the basis of recognizing the general property right of public data, the law allows others to obtain data based on reasonable reasons and obtain the general right to use the corresponding data. Data elements have a stronger public color than physical elements and intelligent property, so they need to face a wider range of free and reasonable use requirements. In addition to personal learning and research purposes, news reports and public opinion supervision, the acquisition and use of small-scale data for production and operation needs should also be reasonable; even, on the premise of not destroying the anti-pickpocketing technical measures and not violating the user agreement, the data obtained through the scale crawling behavior may also be considered as fair use as long as it is not used to engage in activities that compete with the subject being picked up.However, on the one hand, this type of data is mainly limited to public data. On the other hand, if the statutory subject exceeds the requirement of "reasonableness" in terms of use and dosage, it constitutes an infringement of the property right in data and is liable for damages. Currently, a large number of controversial cases concerning the crawling of public data and the use for unfair competition, although dealt with under the framework of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, can be more systematically understood through the predecessor of the "data property rights regime" and the "reasonable use regime", and supported by specialised legislation as well. This is analogous to the obligation of a neighbouring party to tolerate the daily passage of a neighbour through his/her asphalt compound in front of the house; however, the neighbour's act of driving a tracked locomotive, which is prone to ground damage, to pass the compound constitutes an infringement of the right.
Compulsory licensing of data is not limited to publicly available data, provided that the exercise of the right holder's data property rights is legally recognised as monopolistic or that the corresponding data is public data, with the aim of eliminating or reducing the adverse effects of such conduct on the order of competition or of enhancing public welfare through the exploitation of public data. Abuse of a dominant market position by the owner of private data or refusal to open up by the owner of public data makes the data difficult to be accessed and utilised by data-driven third party subjects, and thus hinders healthy market competition and the development of new digital products. In this regard, it is necessary to promote the reasonable flow of data resources by adopting the rules of compulsory contracting provided for in Article 494 (2) and (3) of the Civil Code. If a statutory subject acquires data through a compulsory licence procedure, he or she acquires the right to use the data in general within the scope of the use and the amount of the data that is compatible with the objectives of the compulsory stipulation.

However, compulsory licences for the use of private and public data by statutory subjects differ in terms of purpose, volume and cost, and are affected by the degree of openness of the data. Specifically:
(1) Regarding public data, while adhering to data classification and hierarchical management, efforts should be made to expand the scope of data openness, reduce open conditions, and optimize open channels, in order to maximize the release of data element dividends to social entities. For non open public data, in order to meet the urgent needs of the development of the digital economy, the holder should perform declassification and desensitization processing on the corresponding data and open it to users, or meet social needs by providing data products or data analysis services (such as providing ride hailing platform enterprises with ride hailing driver identity verification and criminal background review information services). The public data property owner has a mandatory obligation to make an acceptance regarding the fair use of the offer. Due to the scale or personalized nature of commercial use, it is necessary to bear the additional public management and service costs incurred as a result. As for whether large-scale use requires additional payment of specialized public data usage fees, this issue involves the legitimacy and mechanism arrangement of establishing data finance on top of public data, and needs to be studied in a special topic.

(2) Regarding private data, the data held by some large network platforms may constitute the "infrastructure" of the corresponding field and therefore constitute the "necessary facilities" of the corresponding field. The State Council's Anti-monopoly Bureau ’s "Anti Monopoly Guidelines in the Field of Platform Economy" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines") directly clarifies this point in Articles 14 and 21. When such data property owners abuse their dominant position in data-driven markets, it may hinder healthy market competition and the development of new digital products. The mandatory contracting rules for platform economy essential facility controllers established in Article 14 of the Guidelines provide a preliminary normative basis for addressing such issues. Third parties in a dominant position can therefore advocate for compulsory contracting with the rights holder.

However, there are significant differences in the frequency of exercising rights and obtaining consideration compared to mandatory licensing rights for public data. On the one hand, under the framework of antitrust law, the judgment of monopolistic behavior, especially the abuse of market dominance, follows the "false negative error tolerance principle", which is the principle of "it is better to miss the judgment than to kill the wrong one". Its purpose is to minimize the negative effects of scale on the market caused by misidentification of monopolies. Therefore, the determination of the exercise of monopolistic data rights is mainly carried out through a "one case, one discussion" approach, at least not becoming a universal operation like recognizing the property rights of data processors. On the other hand, third parties are required by law to compel data monopolists to license their use of corresponding data, which requires meeting reasonable transaction conditions, including reasonable requirements for licensing methods and licensing fees.

5.2 Standardization of data sub rights blocks

Between the data transferor and the transferee, both parties have either defined the boundaries of the intended transfer of rights through highly personalized contract negotiations or determined their boundaries through mandatory regulations. Therefore, there is no need to standardize the rights and regulations in this group of social relations in the substantive law. If it does not violate the agreed or statutory purposes and usage, the sub rights holder may obtain and use the data in the aforementioned manner, and enjoy the corresponding data rights holder relative to the transferor. Of course, in order to save the negotiation costs and potential dispute resolution costs between the parties involved in the transaction, it is necessary to supplement or advocate for standardization of some forms of property rights division between the parties involved in the transaction under the framework of contract law.

In the two sets of social relationships relative to the information source subject and strangers, regardless of the reason for the acquisition of any data sub property rights, there is the same standardization requirement as the general property rights of data. On the one hand, the enjoyment and exercise of data sub property rights need to respect the legal prior rights and interests of the information source entity. On the other hand, they have the right to demand that strangers respect their right to self manage, self use, and dispose of corresponding data sub rights through external business operations. Unless there are legal or agreed reasons, strangers shall not interfere or interfere with the exercise of various sub rights by the rights holder.

In the social relationship relative to the third party in the transaction, if there is an exclusive transfer agreement between the two parties, it is necessary to standardize the data rights obtained by the transferee or retained by the transferor, to facilitate the third party in the transaction to confirm the ownership status of the proposed transaction object and avoid misjudgment and subsequent disputes. This type of problem mainly occurs in the case of agreed acquisition, and generally does not occur in the case of legal acquisition (legally acquired data property rights are usually limited to ordinary data usage rights).

Specifically, ①in the overall transfer, the transferor loses the general property rights of the data, and the transferee becomes the new general property rights holder of the data, with the right to self manage, self use, and dispose of the data through external operations, and the right to request the transferor to delete backup data. Although the new and old data general property rights modules have the same rights, the new data general property rights holders may wish to publicly disclose the fact of the overall transfer through data rights registration and other means due to concerns about the transferor's performance credit, in order to prevent the transferor from retaining the backup and transferring it to a third party again. In this sense, new data generally constitutes a new property rights module with the ability to exclude and confront third parties. ② In an exclusive license, the licensor still has the right to hold the data, but has no right to independently use the data, and its business rights are also restricted. Within the agreed period or scope, the data may not be transferred to or licensed for use by third parties. The licensee hereby obtains the exclusive data usage rights module. ③ In exclusive licensing, the licensee obtains the exclusive data usage rights module. Unlike exclusive licensing rights, the licensor itself retains the right to continue using the data; But like exclusive licensing rights, both have the right to exclude and oppose third parties after registration and publicity. As a comparison, in ordinary licensed use, the licensee obtains the right to use ordinary data, but only has the ability to independently hold and use it, without the ability to exclude and confront third parties, so there is no need to standardize it into a rights module. Even if ordinary data users apply for data rights registration, they can only perform registration functions such as legality confirmation and transaction certificate storage, and do not have the effect of excluding or opposing third parties. ④ In the licensing process, if the licensor specifically agrees to grant the licensee the right to sublicense, the licensee shall obtain an additional rights module, namely the sublicense module, in addition to the corresponding data usage rights. This type of rights module is a special form of management rights in terms of attributes, which can be registered to increase the transaction trust of sub licensees. ⑤ In data guarantee transactions, the holding and use rights of the guarantor are generally not affected. However, in order to maintain the transaction value of the data, its operating rights should be restricted during the guarantee period. In the event that the debtor fails to fulfill the due debt or the parties agree to implement the security right, the secured party shall have the right to receive priority compensation for the data in accordance with the law. Therefore, the secured party can register and obtain the data security right module against third parties in the transaction. The secured party generally does not have the right to use or operate; As for the right to hold, even for the purpose of verifying the consistency between the security data at the time of implementation and the establishment of the security right, it is usually not necessary for the secured party to hold the data. Instead, it can be achieved through a data registration system or by entrusting a neutral third-party service institution to hold the data.

The timely standardization of these data property rights blocks, which aim to exert exclusive effects in relationships with third parties, into rights modules at the legal level depends on the construction of a centralized data registration and disclosure system. Article 3 and Article 15 of the "Twenty Articles of Data" emphasize the exploration and establishment of "new methods for data property registration", providing policy support at the national level. China is currently vigorously exploring the construction of data registration systems from the central to local levels, which is of great significance for the implementation of these rights modules.

6. Further Discussion

This study attempts to demarcate various data rights claims at the level of legal theory and substantive law expression, standardize them into rights modules, and shape the "bundle" of data rights with a descriptive, explanatory, and orderly data rights system to promote the construction of the data element market. This study adheres to the tradition of understanding and constructing rights from the perspective of social relations, and evaluates the moral legitimacy of common data rights block claims through concrete representation in the production and circulation relationships of each group of data. It also standardizes proper rights block claims into different levels of data rights modules from multiple dimensions such as "the way in which rights holders have the right to act on rights objects", Especially the statutory prior rights and data property rights enjoyed by the information source subject and data processing subject respectively, as well as the general property rights of data within the data property rights module and various sub property rights of data that have been divided.
These attempts indicate that from the bottom observation perspective of the data rights bundle, we can still form a stable structure and order within the data rights bundle by evaluating the legitimacy and standardizing the claims of data rights blocks, avoiding slipping into a state of rights disorder. In addition, this data property rights system also helps shape the relationship and order of data property rights in a broader sense. For example, between data property owners and data processing facility providers, data processing assistants (such as data storage and data processing service providers), although the latter may also hold corresponding data, they belong to the category of "beneficial holding" in nature, which is different from the former's "self beneficial holding". Without special agreement, the latter shall not claim or exercise the property rights of the corresponding data outside of achieving the service purpose. When the latter goes bankrupt or becomes the subject of compulsory execution, the former may exercise the right of exclusion or raise an objection to execution. However, in social relationships relative to strangers, it is still necessary to standardize this state of ownership of other interests and empower them to resist intrusion from strangers.