Abstract

Data has been identified as “the” asset of the 21st century, an asset representing a driving force of economic development and an essential component of any business. However, if we look at this new good from the perspective of its circulation, of trade in data, we enter an uncharted territory, where lawyers wander looking for orientation points. One of the biggest uncertainties that lawyers face in this search regards the possibility to establish property rights over data. This essay falls within the still ongoing debate on the legal mechanisms to establish, claim, and transfer property rights of data, offering a first reconstruction of the current situation in the European Union and China, focusing on the central concept of property law, i.e. ownership.