ALI-ELI Principles for a Data Economy (ELI Final Council Draft)

Data access and re-use are crucial for competition and innovation in the data economy and will play a key role in the economic recovery after the COVID-19 crisis. However, the law governing trade in commerce has historically focused on assets and on trade in items, that are either real property, or goods or rights. With the emergence of the data economy, there is a lot of uncertainty concerning the legal rules that should apply to the data economy. To tackle such problems, the American Law Institute and the European Law Institute have joined forces and developed the ALI-ELI Principles for a Data Economy, which aim to make existing law in the field of the data economy more coherent and to inspire the further development of the law by courts and legislators worldwide. Furthermore, the Principles can be used by actors in the data economy to serve as a contractual basis or to complement national contract law, or they could serve as a basis for arbitral proceedings. The ALI-ELI Principles for a Data Economy seek to propose a set of principles that might be implemented in any kind of legal environment and that work in conjunction with any kind of data privacy/data protection law, intellectual property law or trade secret law, without addressing or seeking to change any of the substantive rules of these bodies of law.The Principles are currently revised for publication. The latest version of the Principles (ELI Final Council Draft) can be accessed at: https://principlesforadataeconomy.org/fileadmin/user_upload/p_principlesforadataeconomy/Files/Principles_for_a_Data_Economy_ELI_Final_Council_Draft.pdf