The Problem of Data Ownership: A Comparative Law Perspective

The present contribution aims to investigate the issue of digital data ownership, which lies at the heart of the digital revolution and remains largely unanswered. The article opens with a preliminary outline of the characteristics that distinguish data from other assets. It then goes on to highlight the property models in the comparison between common law and civil law, thereby revealing the difficulties of reconciling the traditional property discourse with data. The EU data strategy demonstrates that the regulation of data collection and transfer is problematic. The paper presents a series of concluding remarks that underscore the necessity to reconfigure established principles in order to align with the demands of the contemporary world.