Data Without Ownership: The Crisis Of IP Protection In Data-Driven Economies
- IJLLR Journal
- 1d
- 1 min read
Chanchal & Aditya Lohani
ABSTRACT
In modern digital economies, data has been a major source of value, but as the legal nature of data, there is a lack of clarity and theory. In this paper, the author focuses on the increasing lack of tie between the economic significance of data and its diminished importance in the context of conventional intellectual property regimes. By a doctrinal study of the law of copyright, patent and trade secret, the study reveals that the current IP frameworks are structurally inadequate to capture data as a legal provision that can be protected. Copyright does not protect data because it is unoriginal information, patent legislation favors technical inventions, rather than information production, and the protection of trade secrets is conditional, frail and requires secrecy. Without the provision of ownership-based protection, similar to the contribution to market concentration, regulatory issues, the de facto data property regimes in the form of contracts, platform governance, and technological controls have become established. The paper uses comparative approaches and maximising the interest of the people in arguing that uncritical data propertisation should not be one of the prior ways and governance model grounded on the notions of access, stewardship, and interoperability. It injects the conclusion that a redefinition of data governance outside the notion of ownership should take place to strike a balance between innovation, competition and societal interests.
Keywords: IPR, Data Protection, Patent, Copyright
