4.3.4 Data Ownership

In the material world, the difference between the terms possession and property is an abstract, yet necessary construct. It is accepted that moving a good from one place to another and changing possession of the good does not necessarily have an impact on the property rights. Regarding the specific concept of the International Data Spaces, it is necessary to take into account that the Data Owner and Data Provider may not be identical (see Chapter 3.1.1).

From a legal perspective, there is no ownership regarding data, as data is an intangible good. With the Free Flow of Data Regulation[^1], the European Commission supports data exchange and data sharing across borders in the means of technical hurdles. The IDS approach supports the implementation of the regulation for non-personal data. At the same time the democratization of data is not the aim of the IDS concept, as data ownership is an important aspect when it comes to offering data and negotiating contracts in digital business ecosystems, especially because data can easily be duplicated.

The International Data Spaces makes sure the need of a Data Provider or a Data Producer is comprehensively addressed by providing a secure and trusted platform for authorization and authentication within a decentralized architecture. This allows Data Providers as well as Service Providers to be identified and controlled by an Identity Provider (see Chapter 3.1.1). Decentralized data exchange by means of Connectors, in contrast to other architectures of data networks (e.g., data lakes or cloud services), ensures full data sovereignty. In addition to these self-control mechanisms, the architecture allows logging of data transfer information at a Clearing House (see Chapter 3.2.5).

As the need for Data Sovereignty is obvious, but the term of ownership is not defined for data, the term Data Sovereign indicates the rights, duties, and responsibilities for this role. The term and the role of the Data Owner is defined for this document in section 3.1.1 and does not cover a legal statement on data ownership. This is indeed relevant on every layer of the architecture.

As the International Data Spaces intends to build upon and apply existing law, it will not include any purely technology-oriented solutions to prevent data duplication or misuse of data assets. However, it supports these important aspects over the entire data lifecycle. Furthermore, it supports the arrangement of collaborative solutions by providing an appropriate technical infrastructure.

[^1]: [Regulation (EU) 2018/1807] (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32018R1807) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 November 2018 on a framework for the free flow of non-personal data in the European Union