ELI Digital Law SIG Held a Third Webinar in its Speaker Series

01.06.2022

On 1 June 2022, the ELI Digital Law SIG held a third webinar in its Speakers’ Series entitled ‘What Can We Still Learn from Data Ownership?’ The seminar was delivered by Charlotte Ducuing (PhD Fellow, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven).

With the Data Governance Act and the Data Act proposals, the European Commission proposes a sui generis regime to regulate data as an economic resource. This raises the question of how to qualify such provisions under traditional branches of the law. The webinar sets out to contribute to this endeavour by evaluating the traces of ‘data ownership’ in the regulation of data as an economic resource, while reckoning that other sources can also be identified.

Once contemplated, ‘data ownership’ is off the table, both due to the specific features of data as an economic resource and to the non-economic dimensions of data. However, and as discussed in this webinar, some aspects of ownership are in (sometimes unexpected ways) present in the Data Governance Act and Data Act proposals. We hereby assume that looking at the regulation of data as an economic resource through the lenses of ‘ownership’ allows, first, to synthesise the proposed legal regime and, second, to unravel significant – but sometimes implicit – elements and patterns.

More details are available here.