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From the magazine SZW-RSDA 1/2017 | S. 25-34 The following page is 25

Eigentum an Sachdaten: Eine Standortbestimmung

In both legal writing and the public debate, there is a noticeable trend of growing support for some type of data ownership. This article examines the ongoing debate, thereby providing some contextual insights and a starting point for future research.

In particular, we argue that a potential right to data ownership does not neatly fit into existing categories of property rights and liability provisions. Among all the available options we considered, the provisions governing neighbouring rights (the so-called «Leistungsschutzrechte») and some of the provisions on unfair competition seem to be the ones best suited as models for a data ownership right. This is potentially due to the fact that these provisions only protect from freeriding on particular data but cannot prohibit the production of the same or similar data by someone else.

We further examine the justifications of such a potential data ownership right and find that no such right is needed to incentivise data production…

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