The long-expected Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China was adopted by the National People’s Congress on 28 May 2020 for implementation on 1 January 2021. One of the seven parts is on personality rights. This structural innovation of the Chinese Civil Code (2020) departs from the classic five-part civil codes that emphasize the legal protection of property rights over personality rights. The seminar will examine the changes and implications of the Part on Personality Rights by asking questions including what are general personality rights? Does the consent rule go too far in the protection of right of portrait? Does the law protect one’s right of name where the name involved is not the real name of a person? How does the law protect our privacy and personal information in the age of big data?

About the Speaker:
Prof. Xie Lin is Associate Professor and Vice Director of the Intellectual Property Law Institute of the School of Law at Sun Yat-sen University. She obtained her PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2012, specializing in intellectual property law. Prof. Xie is author of the book Copyright Restrictions Anchored Purely to Utilitarian Justification (Law Press, 2014) and is in charge of several high-level research projects including the ‘Risk Control in Context: Personal Data Protection in the Big Data Era’ funded by the National Social Science Fund of China. She has published on intellectual property and personal data protection in prestigious academic law journals including Tribune of Political Science and Law and Intellectual Property. Prof. Xie has established her teaching and research expertise in civil law, intellectual property law, personal data protection law and family law.