On (Intellectual) Property and other Legal Frameworks in the Digital Economy

From an economic standpoint, this paper investigates the need for an (new) intellectual property right for data. Firstly, an overview of the status quo of the literature on property rights for data will be provided. This will be followed by an analysis of the characteristics of data as a good, clarifying the circumstances under which a market failure can occur. Accordingly, only a market failure situation will authorise economic policy intervention. Lastly, we will derive specific policy implications, offering economic reasoning on a new intellectual property right for data and specifically pointing to other forms of law that may be more applicable for reaching an efficient allocation of data resources.