Company: ZHIHF
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001410578-25-000729
Chunk: 254

Company: Zhihu Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 4
Chunk 254
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 privacy and protection. In addition, we adopt a data encryption system intended to ensure the secured storage and transmission of data and prevent any unauthorized public member or third parties from accessing or using our data in any unauthorized manner. We have implemented internal controls to ensure that user data is protected, and that leakage and loss of such data is avoided. Furthermore, we have appointed a team of dedicated data protection professionals who are responsible for designing and monitoring data security management and emergency response. Data access attempts by any third party are subject to our evaluation and approval procedure based on the necessity and scope of the attempts and appropriate consent from our users. We typically provide third parties with anonymous and desensitized personal information and require such third parties to undertake equivalent data protection measures. 
To date, we have not been subject to any material fines or other material penalties due to non-compliance with data privacy and security laws or regulations. Based on the foregoing, Global Law Office, our PRC legal counsel, is of the view that we are in compliance with currently applicable PRC data privacy and cybersecurity laws and regulations that may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations in all material respects as of the date of this annual report.
Intellectual Property
We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark, domain name, and trade secret laws and restrictions on disclosure to protect our intellectual property rights. As of March 31, 2025, we had 89 registered patents, 4 pending patent registration applications, 1,255 registered trademarks, 44 pending trademark registration applications, registered copyrights to 63 pieces of software, and 26 domain names (including zhihu.com). As of the date of this annual report, we are not subject to any material claims or allegations relating to intellectual property that will have material adverse effect to our business operations.
Competition
Our competitors mainly include (i) comprehensive online content communities and (ii) other online content communities that specialize in certain content verticals, such as certain lifestyle sharing platforms, live streaming platforms, knowledge sharing platforms, and hobby communities.
China’s online content community industry is highly competitive and rapidly changing in response to the evolving market demand and user preferences. We compete to attract, engage, and retain users, content creators, and merchants and brands. Our competitors may compete with us in a variety of ways, including by providing better content, fulfilling evolving user needs, providing content creation utilities, and conducting brand promotions and other marketing activities. Our content creators are generally free to post their content