The project analyses the feasibility of an explicit legal mechanism in the form of a novel IP right for establishing control rights in digitally collected and generated non-personal data and formalising their transactions.

The research attends to the problem that, in the fragmented and ever-changing data-rich environment we live in, a lack of comprehensive and practically applicable regulatory framework for data controllership leads to imminent overlaps between the available legal instruments and their problematic application in theory and practice. As of today, data is not meaningfully covered by any IP legal system, while still being heavily embedded in IP and related rights protection. Likewise, in the classical property rights regime, data is not and will likely not be subject to property rights in the semantic sense, even if it exhibits some characteristics of property. The recent legislative initiatives taken by the EU regulator, such as the Data Act, are not close to being sufficient. On the contrary, they expose serious weaknesses pertaining to the limited scope of application, users’ weak bargaining position in business-to-consumer transactions, and manufacturers’ de facto monopolistic control over data.

If there is no comprehensive normative framework for the legal status of data and a clear attachment of control rights to data, there are also no rules on which data access, licensing, transfers, modification, combination, and disposal can be formalised. Supplementing the current EU digital governance framework with a new comprehensive legal instrument might contribute to unlocking the potential of data, boosting innovation, and providing clarity to the stakeholders  (device producers, online service providers, and users) involved in dealing with data.