CHINA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Vincent Wang, Xinyao Zhao and Amy Cao, Global Law Office
assessing the fair value of data. Most companies are currently observing early adopters and have not yet acted. Data exploitation and utilisation The National Data Bureau was established in late 2023 and took proactive measures in 2024 to facilitate data utilisation and monetisation. On 20 December 2024, the National Data Bureau and other departments issued the Opinions on Promoting the Development and Utilisation of Enterprise Data Resources. The document aims to protect enterprises’ legitimate rights in data collection, development, utilisation and benefit distribution. On 30 December 2024, the National Develop - ment and Reform Commission, the National Data Bureau and other departments issued Guiding Opinions to Promote the High-Quality Develop - ment of the Data Industry. The document high - lights key areas in the data lifecycle, including data collection, data storage, data governance, data analysis, data trade, data exploitation and data security. In 2025, it calls for co-ordinated efforts between central ministries and local gov - ernments to implement the incentives outlined in the guidelines. Law enforcement and judicial judgments Regular inspections on apps, mini programs and software development kits (SDKs) The governmental authorities continue to carry out compliance inspections on publicly avail - able apps, mini programs and SDKs regarding personal information protection laws. The most common non-compliance issues include inad - equate privacy policies, illegal collection of per - sonal information, excessive device permission requests, and failure to respond to individuals’ requests for their personal information rights.
Judicial cases concerning AI are on the rise In 2024, like the EU and the United States, China experienced a surge of disputes relating to arti - ficial intelligence, marking several “first cases” in China. Most of these cases involve copyright issues. Landmark cases in 2024 include the fol - lowing. • In early 2024, the Beijing Internet Court published a case ruling that an AI-generated image was copyrightable. The court deter - mined that the plaintiff’s aesthetic choices and personal judgement in the entire genera - tion process utilising the AI tool were signifi - cant, and thus subject to copyright protec - tion. • On 8 February 2024, the Guangzhou Internet Court issued a judgment in China on AIGC content infringement. In this case, a text-to- image AIGC tool provider was found liable for infringing the copyright of the Ultraman IP. The court emphasised that AIGC service providers must exercise a “reasonable duty of care” to protect intellectual property rights in accordance with Chinese law. • On 23 April 2024, the Beijing Internet Court issued a ruling in the case of infringement of personal rights related to AI-generated voices. The court determined that the protec - tion for natural persons’ voices can extend to AI-generated voices, provided they are identifiable. • Disputes over training materials for large language models are increasing as well, but no court judgment has yet been issued. For example, in June 2024 the Beijing Internet Court accepted a case where four painting artists sued a content generation platform. The plaintiffs claimed that the AI painting tool on the platform generated images that conspicuously imitated their artistic styles, alleging that the platform utilised their work
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