Study  |  07/24/2023

Access to Data versus Exclusive Control over Data in European Data Rules

Valentina Moscon, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute, in her recent article identifies a trend in the European data rules. This is moving toward the creation of data exclusivity based on copyright and technical protection measures and contradicts the claim of free access to data.

Dr. Valentina Moscon, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute.
Dr. Valentina Moscon, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute.

Moscon uses case studies – specifically, the text and data mining (TDM) regime in the 2019 EU Copyright Directive and the upcoming EU Data Act laying down rules on access to IoT data – to analyze the ways in which the identified trend is already gaining traction and where it conflicts with both established principles of European and international copyright law and the balanced consideration of stakeholders’ interests.


On the one hand, the case of TDM shows that the scope of copyright is expanding and arguably, private ordering mechanisms such as technological protection measures (TPMs) which allow right holders to wield exclusive rights, are extending this scope even further, beyond the realm of works, to the realm of data. On the other hand, new legislative initiatives regulating data leave intellectual property rights other than the sui generis database right unaffected, with minor limitations, so that there will likely be a clash between data access rules and the exclusive rights of copyright and related rights holders. Also, the Data Act proposal introduces the protection of technological protection measures over data thereby further strengthening the exclusive control over data. Finally, in her paper Moscon formulates some recommendations for action.


Valentina Moscon
Data Access Rules, Copyright and Protection of Technological Protection Measures in the EU. A Wave of Propertisation of Information
Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 23-14