Ownership of data: Four recommendations for future research

This Article makes four recommendations for ongoing and future research about data ownership. The essence of these recommendations is that we need to know what we are talking about before we can even think of trying to answer the question whether data ownership should be recognized. What do we mean by ownership? And are we talking about information, data, digital data, data files, or data carriers? The first and second recommendations assert that lawyers need to be precise about the meaning and the possible object of ownership. Lawyers also need to cooperate closely with IT-specialists in order to know what is out there in the digital word which is this Article's third recommendation. The fourth recommendation holds that creditors of digital data owners must also be considered and treated as stakeholders in the debate on recognizing data ownership.