Keywords
data ownership, property law, European Community law, protection of personal data, fundamental freedoms, data sover-eignty, property asset, tangible and non-tangible property, transfer of ownership, assigning data ownership rights, rights of use and de-fensive rights, restriction rights against others
Abstract
Data has become one of the most important resources in post-modern information society. However, European civil law does not reflect this development adequately. In fact, so far, European civil law seems to struggle with handling data as a legal entity. Against this background, the article provides a transnational overview and a comprehensive analysis of the legal situation in Europe. It discusses why data ownership is widely perceived as a problem on this side of the Atlantic and how this perception can be overcome by a fundamental property law approach. Taking into account economic realities, we argue that European property law provides a sufficient framework for establishing a theoretical concept of data ownership. Therefore, we draft the dimensions of a data ownership concept by proposing potential criteria for assigning ownership and analyzing both positive access and negative restriction rights.
Repository Citation
Andreas Boerding, Nicolai Culik, Christian Doepke, Thomas Hoeren, Tim Juelicher, Charlotte Roettgen, and Max V. Schoenfeld,
Data Ownership—A Property Rights Approach from a European Perspective,
11 J. Civ. L. Stud.
(2018)
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/jcls/vol11/iss2/5