No One's Ownership as the Status Quo and a Possible Way Forward: A Note on the Public Consultation on Building a European Data Economy

Abstract

Earlier this year, the European Commission carried out a public consultation on Building a European Data Economy. The key legal question of the initiative is how access and use rights in industrial data, as a digital resource, should be defined and allocated in order to achieve the objectives of the EU data-driven economy. This analysis focuses on the proposals for new rights in industrial data and takes a methodological perspective of designing a regulatory intervention. The overall argument is that the ‘intervention logic’ behind the presented proposals for a data producer’s right does not appear straightforward, and that keeping the scenario of non-intervention by such rights might not be the least optimal option among the possible ‘ways forward’.

Keywords: data ownership; data-driven innovation; data-driven economy