Abstract: Based on the theory of civil law, this paper re-understands the basic issues of intellectual property rights, such as ontology, subject and object. The author thinks that intellectual property is essentially an intangible property right, and the immateriality of the object is the same legal feature of the right to which intellectual property belongs; Based on the spirit of equality, the subject system of intellectual property rights is different from the general civil subject system in terms of original acquisition, derivative acquisition and national treatment. Knowledge products are a new generalization of all kinds of intellectual property protection objects, and their types mainly include creative achievements, business marks and business credit. Key words: the immateriality of the object, the qualification of the subject and the scope of multiple subjects and knowledge products. Intellectual property is a new type of civil right different from traditional property ownership, and it is the product of the development of modern commodity economy and science and technology. It is difficult to explain this right by using the theory of real right since Roman law. Based on the theory of civil law, this paper tries to discuss the basic problems of intellectual property rights, such as ontology, subject and object system, in order to describe the essential characteristics of this kind of rights and summarize the basic differences between them and property ownership. I. Nature of Intellectual Property The traditional property ownership system does not involve knowledge products or intellectual achievements. In the concept system of German civil law, it is generally believed that the extension of things only covers material entities and natural forces. (Note: See Liu Xinwen, editor-in-chief: Review of China Civil Law Research, China University of Political Science and Law Press, 1996, p. 295. Although the French civil law theory has a broad understanding of things, its immateriality specifically refers to the rights with property content. (Note: See the French Encyclopedia of larousse, Volume 3, which contains "Translation of Foreign Laws" and "Civil Law", Knowledge Press, 1987, p. 168. This shows that the civil laws of civil law countries do not regard knowledge products as the direct adjustment object of ownership system. In fact, jurists and legislators have made unremitting efforts to cover intangible spiritual products with the traditional ownership system. In the 18th century, the theory of "spiritual ownership" was popular in continental European countries to protect literary and artistic works. As early as the feudal period, the publishing privilege was granted to the limited areas of feudal monarchs, and often for a certain period of time, which led to the exclusive publishing consciousness of publishers. This is the early "publishing ownership" theory. Later, due to the decline of the feudal dynasty and the evolution of the concept of civil class rights, publishers began to advocate that the monopoly protection of publications should not be created by the king's granting of privileges, but should be based on the transfer of the author's spiritual ownership. They tried to give their monopoly rights a new theoretical aura based on the thought of natural law, that is, to replace the previous claim of "publishing ownership" with the theory of "spiritual ownership" (Note: See L.Ray Patterson, Stanley W. Lindberg: "The Nature of Copyright: A Law of Users' Right", The U-niversity of Georgia Press, 1991; Wu Handong: Research on the Fair Use System of Copyright, China University of Political Science and Law Press, 1996, p. 4. In France, the absolute concept of ownership has been expanding since it was confirmed during the Great Revolution in 1789. Among them, the expansion of the definition of ownership is first manifested in the field of intellectual property, which is used to "adapt to the legal relationship between its subject matter and its performance and a variety of completely different categories of dominance." In French law theory, spiritual ownership is understood as an exclusive right that can resist all people, and it is a kind of ownership. (Note: Yin Tian: French Property Law, Law Press, 1998, p. 122. But this theoretical generalization is flawed. Its disadvantages are: first, the concept of ownership is applied to the right of intangible wealth, "making it far beyond the scope of technically accurate understanding of it". (Note: (France) Julio Morangel: A Course of French Civil Law, Selected Materials of Foreign Civil Law, Law Press, 1983, p. 231. ) Although ownership and rights related to spiritual products have some features in common, the latter has different properties and is subject to different provisions. Second, "from the original meaning of ownership, the above rights are not real ownership". (Note: Yin Tian: French Property Law, Law Press, 1998, p. 122. ) They are not based on material products (tangible things), but on intellectual and creative knowledge products, which are special non-material objects. Therefore, in order to meet the needs of social science, technology, culture and economic development and fill the blank area of legal adjustment, it is necessary for us to "liberate from the shackles of the concept of property rights of simple goods ownership of a single person" and "produce a form of rights that is very alienated from tangible objects". (Note: (USA) Gray: On the Disintegration of Property Rights, contained in Comparison of Economic and Social Systems, No.5, 1994. ) This form of right is intellectual property. In China, some scholars put forward "a new theory on the object of property ownership" in view of the large number of intangible property appearing and widely entering the field of production and circulation. The theory holds that "property" as the object of ownership includes not only tangible property, but also intangible property. According to its logical expression, intangible property belongs to the scope of ownership object, intellectual achievements belong to the scope of intangible property, and inventions and registered trademarks belong to the scope of intellectual achievements. Therefore, intellectual achievements belong to the scope of ownership objects, and inventions and registered trademarks also belong to the scope of ownership objects. (Note: Yang Zixuan: A New Theory on the Object of Property Ownership, Chinese and Foreign Law, No.3, 1996. This assumption that knowledge products and material products, both intangible property and tangible property, are classified as ownership objects is difficult to justify in theory and practice. According to the existing civil legislation system and the basic theory of civil law, the object of ownership cannot include intangible knowledge products. This is because, once the value-form property or intangible property becomes the object of ownership, the traditional ownership system and its theory will inevitably be stretched. "The most intuitive fact is that the power of ownership and its exercise method cannot be successfully used for the value-form property or intangible property." (Note: Gu Peidong: Exploration of Law and Economics, China People's Public Security University Press, 1994, p. 14. ) That is to say, the theory of "four powers" about possession, use, income and disposal is completely based on the object of physical form, which obviously does not apply to spiritual products of non-physical form. The intellectual achievements in the spiritual field cannot be the adjustment object of the traditional ownership system, but can only belong to the category of new property rights objects. The object of intellectual property is a kind of intangible intellectual wealth. The immateriality of object is the essential attribute of intellectual property, and it is also the most fundamental difference between this right and traditional ownership. Some scholars believe that the fundamental difference between intellectual property rights and other property rights lies in its invisibility, and other legal characteristics, such as exclusivity, timeliness and regionality, are derived from it. (Note: Zheng Chengsi, editor-in-chief: A Course of Intellectual Property Law, Law Press, 1993, p. 45. Some scholars hold different views. Mr. Zeng Shixiong believes that the tangible or intangible property right refers not to the right, but to the living resources controlled by the right, that is, whether the object has a shape or not. For example, the right of house ownership itself is not tangible and intangible, but the problem lies in the fact that the house is physical; As a copyright, it does not cause tangible and intangible problems. The key is that the work is an intelligent product and is intangible. (Note: Zeng Shixiong: The Present and Future of General Principles of Civil Law, Taiwan Province Sanmin Publishing House, 1983, p. 151. Strictly speaking, the boundary and scope of the behavior that the right as the subject can implement by virtue of the law to realize a certain interest is almost a subjective fiction without external entities. It is in this sense that rights with property content (except ownership) are called intangible things from Roman jurists to modern civil law scholars. Therefore, the essential difference between intellectual property and traditional ownership is not the so-called intangibility of this right, but the immateriality of its right object, that is, knowledge products. Second, the basic characteristics of intellectual property rights The basic characteristics of intellectual property rights are usually elaborated in textbooks. The generalization of these characteristics varies in various versions of writings, but their basic characteristics are mainly "exclusivity", "regionality" and "timeliness". At the same time, the description of these characteristics is relative to other property rights, especially ownership, and not all of them are unique to intellectual property rights. 1. Exclusive intellectual property is an exclusive civil right. Compared with creditor's rights, it is as exclusive and absolute as ownership. On this attribute of intellectual property, French scholars have launched a purely academic and almost rigid "pedantic discussion". Some scholars believe that intellectual property is a kind of "property right" (ownership), which means "intellectual ownership". But most scholars doubt whether intellectual property rights are real ownership. According to the characteristics of the subject matter and content of the right, they generally call intellectual property a monopoly or exclusive right. (Note: See Yin Tian: French Property Law, Law Press, 1998, p. 86. Japanese scholars agree with most French scholars. In Kojima's view, intellectual property, different from ownership, is a "brand-new special right", which can be divided into "exclusive right" and prohibition right. The former refers to the right to monopolize its object, which mainly includes copyright, patent right, trademark right, trade name right, circuit layout design right, new plant variety right, etc. The latter refers to the right to prohibit sanctions for violating unfair competition obligations, which mainly involves the right to trade secrets, the right to commodity image, the right to goodwill and so on. (Note: (Japan) Kojima Yong He: Intangible Property Rights, Japan Chuangcheng Society, 1998, pp. 5-9. In fact, exclusiveness and absoluteness are the same characteristics of intellectual property and ownership. The difference between the two is not that the former is "monopoly right" and the latter is "property right", but the key difference should be that the former is the ownership of intangible property and the latter is the ownership of tangible property. The exclusivity of intellectual property is mainly manifested in two aspects: first, intangible property is monopolized by the obligee, who monopolizes this exclusive right and is strictly protected. No one may use the obligee's knowledge products without legal provisions or permission; Second, for the same intellectual product, two or more intellectual property rights with the same attribute are not allowed to coexist. For example, two identical inventions can only be granted the patent right to one of them according to legal procedures, and the subsequent inventions can not obtain the corresponding rights if they have no outstanding substantive features and significant progress compared with the existing technologies. Intellectual property rights and ownership are also different in terms of exclusive effect. First of all, the exclusiveness of ownership shows that the owner excludes the non-owner from illegally occupying, obstructing or destroying his property, while the exclusiveness of intellectual property mainly excludes the non-owner from illegally copying, counterfeiting or plagiarizing knowledge products; Secondly, the exclusivity of ownership is absolute, that is, the owner exercises the right to things, without allowing others to interfere or actively assisting, under the condition that the property is controlled by the owner, and without geographical and time restrictions. The exclusivity of intellectual property rights is relative, and this monopolistic right is often restricted by power (such as fair use in copyright, temporary transit use in patent right, use by the first user in trademark right, etc.). At the same time, the exclusivity of this right only takes effect in a certain spatial region and within the effective period. 2. Regionality It is generally believed that regionality is a unique feature of intellectual property rights. In fact, regionality has existed in many fields of civil rights in history. According to the research of scholars in private international law, in the field of tort debt, tort litigation has long been under the jurisdiction of the court where the tort occurred, and the law of the place where the tort occurred is applicable. In the field of contractual debt, the regionality of the law has also caused the rigidity of the application of the law and the difficulty in executing judgments abroad. The reason for this phenomenon is that when these rights came into being, most countries were in a feudal locked state, and foreign trade and economic exchanges were scarce. Occasionally, foreign-related disputes can be resolved through their domestic laws, so there is no need to resort to the extraterritorial effect of rights. (Note: Griffith, et al.: Comments on the Law of Regional Conflicts of Intellectual Property Rights, Journal of the Central Institute of Political Science and Law Management, No.6, 1998. ) In this case, the above-mentioned civil rights cannot be without certain regionality. The emergence of intellectual property rights has the same historical background as the above system. At the end of the feudal countries in Europe, the original copyright and patent right were granted by the monarch and appeared as concessions, so this right could only be exercised within the jurisdiction of the monarch. The regionality of this primitive intellectual property right is the regionality of feudal law. With the development of modern bourgeois law, intellectual property finally broke away from the form of feudal concession and became a legal spiritual property. However, according to the principle of national sovereignty, capitalist countries (note: the regionality of intellectual property protection not only stems from the geographical restrictions of national sovereignty, but also lies in the geographical restrictions of intellectual property authorization (such as authorization after national examination and national registration). See Zhang Naigen, Intellectual Property Law of International Trade, Fudan University Press, 1999, p. 52. ) only the intellectual property rights obtained according to domestic laws are protected, so regionality as the characteristic of intellectual property rights continues to be preserved. If the obligee who obtains intellectual property rights in one country wants to be protected by law in another country, he must register or be examined and approved in accordance with the laws of that country. Since the end of the 19th century, with the development of science and technology and the expansion of international trade, the international market for intellectual property transactions has also begun to form and develop. In this way, there is a huge contradiction between the international demand of intellectual products and the regional restrictions of intellectual property rights. In order to solve this contradiction, countries have successively signed some international conventions to protect intellectual property rights, established some global or regional international organizations, and established a set of international protection system for intellectual property rights around the world. The provisions of international conventions on the principle of national treatment are an important supplement and coordination to the regional restrictions of intellectual property rights. Because of this principle, it is possible for intellectual property rights recognized or granted by a country to have extraterritorial effects in contracting countries according to international conventions. However, the regional characteristics of intellectual property rights have not wavered, and whether to grant rights and how to protect them still need to be decided by each state party in accordance with its domestic law. By the second half of the 2th century, due to the integration of regional economy and the development of modern science and technology, the legislation of intellectual property rights showed a trend of modernization and integration, thus, the strict regionality of intellectual property rights was also challenged. This is mainly manifested in two aspects: (1) The emergence of transnational intellectual property rights. Regional economic integration has enabled groups of countries to unite and realize the free circulation of goods, capital, personnel and services in a unified market, thus promoting the unification of intellectual property protection in related countries. In order to achieve the goal of economic integration, one of the important actions taken by the European Union is to establish a broad European protection system in the field of industrial property rights and copyrights, that is, it is working hard under the impetus of regional economic integration.