Reconstructing the Path of Commercial Data Protection: Reflections on Existing Systems, Technical Pathways, and Innovation in New Tiered Models
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: As a core element of the digital economy, commercial data has been the subject of frequent disputes due to the lack of clear legal regulations governing its protection. This paper first defines the concept of commercial data and clarifies its four core attributes: 'legality, scale, manageability, and value.’ It then explores the limitations of existing approaches: the property rights model may lead to monopolies and unclear ownership; the contractual rights model is constrained by the principle of contractual relativity; the copyright model only covers data compilations with 'originality’; while the Anti-Unfair Competition Law is the mainstream approach, its scope of protection for trade secrets is narrow, and there are issues such as unclear standards and insufficient coordination between general provisions and internet-specific provisions.Based on this, this paper proposes a 'tiered progression’ model: prioritise copyright law to protect original data; apply trade secret protection to data that does not meet the originality requirement but meets other criteria such as confidentiality; and apply the internet-specific provisions and general provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law to the remaining data in sequence. This model aims to precisely protect commercial data while balancing circulation and competitive order, but it still requires legal coordination and judicial rules to provide institutional safeguards.
Author: Zerun Zhao
Institution: Hunan University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4414477578
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