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The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA, 国家知识产权局) is the central authority responsible for patents, trademarks, geographical indications, and integrated-circuit layout-design rights in the People's Republic of China; following the March 2023 Party and State institutional reform, it was elevated from an agency managed by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) to a vice-ministerial agency reporting directly to the State Council, while trademark and patent enforcement responsibilities continue to be carried out by SAMR's integrated market-regulation enforcement teams under CNIPA's professional guidance. Within the digital human sector, CNIPA functions both as the registry of record for the industry's rapidly expanding patent stock — its patent retrieval database documented 544 digital human–related patent applications filed in 2023 alone, a figure routinely cited in Chinese industry reports as evidence of the sector's accelerating IP intensity — and as a policy actor shaping the legal status of virtual beings as a novel intellectual-property object. In June 2023, Zhongzhi Wisdom Technology (中知智慧科技公司), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNIPA's affiliated Intellectual Property Publishing House (知识产权出版社), launched the China Digital Human Intellectual Property Evidence Storage and Protection Platform (中国数字人知识产权存证保护平台) jointly with industry leaders Fanxing Chaoyue (繁星超越), Tai-One Group (太一集团), and Huiwen Media (汇文传媒); positioned as a strategic deployment within CNIPA's national IP service architecture, the platform unifies IP evidence storage, digital copyright protection, and digital identity management to address compliance and rights-circulation problems specific to digital humans as a new form of IP asset. CNIPA's annual National Intellectual Property Publicity Week and the flagship China IP Protection High-Level Forum have likewise become showcase venues for digital human technology — exemplified by Mobvoi (出门问问)'s "Mobile Xiaowen Digital Human" (小问移动数字人) appearing at the 2025 Beijing main venue and CNIPA Open Day — while the agency's IP Protection Department has publicly signalled deepening reform in emerging-field IP protection, against a backdrop of landmark virtual-digital-human trade-secret and AI-infringement litigation moving through specialised IP courts. Together, these functions position CNIPA as the principal institutional anchor for the legal, doctrinal, and infrastructural integration of digital humans into China's intellectual-property regime.
Beijing Zhongzhi Wisdom Technology Co., Ltd. (北京中知智慧科技有限公司, also rendered as 中知（北京）智慧科技有限公司 / Zhongzhi (Beijing) Wisdom Technology Co., Ltd.) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Intellectual Property Publishing House (知识产权出版社) under the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA, 国家知识产权局), and serves as the publishing house's principal industrialisation vehicle for IP big-data, patent analytics, knowledge services, and digital-technology applications, headquartered at 50 Qixiang Road, Haidian District, Beijing (北京市海淀区气象路50号院). Its established product portfolio anchors China's national IP information infrastructure — including the PatSea / Inspiro (中知慧海) intellectual-property big-data and intelligent-services platform, the CNIPR patent information service, TMScope trademark intelligent search, DesignScope design-patent search, and an enterprise patent-custody platform — positioning the company as a core data and platform operator within CNIPA's service ecosystem. In the digital human sector, Zhongzhi Wisdom Technology entered the field on 17 June 2023 when, on behalf of CNIPA's Intellectual Property Publishing House, it jointly initiated the China Digital Human Intellectual Property Evidence Storage and Protection Platform (中国数字人知识产权存证保护平台) together with industry partners Fanxing Chaoyue (繁星超越), Tai-One Group (太一集团), and Huiwen Media (汇文传媒), launching the project at the 13th China International Trademark Brand Festival in Dongguan; senior representation at the launch included IPPH Deputy Party Secretary and Deputy General Manager Li Cheng (李程) and IP Department Director Liu Huabing (刘化冰), alongside platform head Chen Xi (陈西). Through this platform — subsequently operated through the affiliated entity Zhongzhi Kechuang (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (中知科创（北京）技术有限公司) and extended via a 2.0 release in August 2023 and the founding of the Digital Human Data Asset Operation Alliance (数字人数据资产运营联盟) in November 2023 — Zhongzhi Wisdom Technology has translated its IP-data infrastructure expertise into the only national-level comprehensive service platform for digital human compliance, evidence filing, originality protection, and asset recognition, effectively functioning as the operational arm through which CNIPA exercises platform-level governance over digital humans as a new form of intellectual-property asset.
The China Digital Human Intellectual Property Evidence Storage and Protection Platform (中国数字人知识产权存证保护平台) is China's first and only national-level comprehensive service platform dedicated to digital human compliance operation, formally launched on 17 June 2023 by Zhongzhi Wisdom Technology (中知智慧科技公司) — a wholly-owned subsidiary of the China National Intellectual Property Administration's Intellectual Property Publishing House (知识产权出版社) — jointly with industry leaders Fanxing Chaoyue (繁星超越), Tai-One Group (太一集团), and Huiwen Media (汇文传媒), and is positioned as a strategic deployment within CNIPA's national IP service architecture, integrating online-content and dissemination review with intellectual-property protection across a single workflow. Operated through Zhongzhi Kechuang (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (中知科创（北京）技术有限公司) and headed by director Chen Xi (陈西), the platform combines blockchain, big data, cloud computing, and GPT-class large models to issue four core certificates for every registered digital human — compliance review, originality protection, identity filing, and asset recognition (合规审核、原创保护、身份备案、资产认定) — effectively providing what Chinese press describes as an "ID card" system for digital humans, in which appearance, identity, IP rights, and data-asset status are formally vetted and recorded before deployment. A 2.0 release in August 2023 strengthened the compliance-review module and completed China's first national-level digital human evidence filing, with subsequent filings including Ant Group's Lingjing Digital Human Platform (蚂蚁集团灵境数字人平台) and Jiufang's intelligent investment-advisory digital human (九方智能投顾数字人); in November 2023 the platform led the founding of the Digital Human Data Asset Operation Alliance (数字人数据资产运营联盟) together with the China Advertising Association's Digital Metaverse Working Committee, consolidating its role as the de facto infrastructure layer and rights-clearing authority for China's digital human industry, with cross-regional partnerships extending into the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cultural-industries corridor, Henan Broadcasting, and provincial digital-transformation programs.
The Digital Human Data Asset Operation Alliance (数字人数据资产运营联盟) is China's first national industry alliance dedicated to the operation of digital humans as data assets, formally established on 23 November 2023 as the flagship project unveiled at that year's AIGC Metaverse Marketing Conference. The alliance was jointly initiated by the China Digital Human Intellectual Property Evidence Storage and Protection Platform (中国数字人知识产权存证保护平台) — operating under the China National Intellectual Property Administration's Intellectual Property Publishing House (国家知识产权局知识产权出版社) — and the China Advertising Association's Digital Metaverse Working Committee (中国广告协会数字元宇宙工作委员会), with operational responsibility vested in Zhongzhi Kechuang (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (中知科创（北京）技术有限公司), the same entity that runs the national-level digital human evidence-storage platform. Founding members span the leading edge of China's digital human ecosystem, including the Zhongguancun Big Data Alliance (中关村大数据联盟), the China National Geographic Visual Center (中国国家地理影视中心), Boyao Cultural and Creative Academy (博鳌文创院), Heijing Technology (黑镜科技), and Bdbd Digital Technology (八点八数字科技). Positioned as the operational and governance layer sitting above the underlying evidence-storage infrastructure, the alliance focuses on deployment scenarios across digital industry, smart cultural tourism, intellectual property, intangible cultural heritage, and geographical-indication products, and has established strategic partnerships with the Hangzhou International Digital Trading Center (杭州国际数字交易中心), the Zhejiang Cultural Property Exchange (浙江文化产权交易所), and the Electronics City High-Tech Group (电子城高科) to expand digital-asset transaction venues and metaverse demonstration bases. Together, these arrangements consolidate the alliance's role as the central industry coordination body for the commercialisation, rights-circulation, and asset-trading of Chinese digital humans, effectively translating CNIPA-anchored IP filings into a market-facing layer for digital human assets within China's emerging data-element economy.