A total of 837 data products had generated over 19.6 billion yuan ($2.84 billion) in economic value through licensing, trading, and service fees by February since Shanghai became one of the first cities in China to initiate the intellectual property registration of data products in December 2024.

Additionally, 16 enterprises had secured a total of 355 million yuan in loans using their registered data product IP as collateral, the Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration said at a media briefing on Wednesday.

Industry experts emphasized that such progress showed that the IP registration of data products is a crucial step in transforming data from a resource into an asset.

They explained that the concept of the IP of data products refers to the rights held by individuals and legal entities over data resources that have been legally acquired and subsequently processed and innovated to create intellectual assets with commercial value.

It usually includes their rights over data processing collections, data processing products and data technical algorithms.

Officials from SIPA said that as an emerging factor of production, data is becoming an important source of value creation, and the confirmation and registration of its ownership are important.

As of Friday, SIPA had received more than 1,500 applications for IP registration of data products, and had issued certificates for more than 1,100.

The applications involved nearly 600 legal entities and over 200 individuals.

The registered data products came from a diverse range of State-owned and private enterprises, as well as universities.

Among the enterprise applicants, over 80 percent were high-tech enterprises or specialized and innovative firms, with their data products closely linked to their core business operations, representing significant commercial value, said Xu Shang, head of the strategic planning division at SIPA.

The applications primarily focused on data processing products, data processing collections, and data technology algorithm covering areas, including model corpora, computing power algorithms, financial services, education and culture, and transportation.

"Notably, artificial intelligence and biopharmaceuticals constitute a large portion of the applications, aligning with Shanghai's leading industries," said Xu.

In judicial practice, enterprises have successfully used the IP certificates of their data products as key pieces of evidence to win data infringement cases.

For instance, in a notable case, the "xiao wang shen" software had operated as a browser plug-in on the Taobao platform since 2019, illegally scraping vast amounts of operational data through techniques like reverse engineering and encryption bypass. Several affiliated firms then processed the scraped data to replace the services of Taobao's paid data product "business adviser", diverting paying users.

The infringement through Alipay and WeChat channels alone generated nearly 23 million yuan in revenue.

Taobao registered its core data product involved in the case with SIPA.

This registration certificate proved that Taobao held independent proprietary rights over its derivative data products, which were formed through substantial processing and innovative efforts, serving as a key piece of evidence for the court to establish ownership of the data rights.

In June 2025, the Nanjing Intermediate People's Court in Jiangsu province ruled in the first instance, awarding Taobao 30 million yuan in damages for economic losses.

zhouwenting@chinadaily.com.cn