European intellectual property and data protection in the digital-algorithmic economy: a role reversal(?)

Abstract

Giulia Schneider holds a law degree from Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (Italy). She is currently a PhD candidate in Legal Studies at Bocconi University in Milan (Italy). Her research interests focus on the regulation of digital markets. This article investigates the evolution of the interaction between European IP and data protection laws in the algorithmic economy. It seeks to show the unsuitability of traditional legal theories in respect to the newly emerging paradigms. As a consequence of the reforms introduced over the past few years, the European IP and data protection frameworks have undergone a shift in terms of the systemic functions respectively carried out. By virtue of the extension of artistic IP tools to industrial information assets and the introduction of sui generis IP tools protecting industrial information as such, the European IP system has taken on a new control and secretization function regarding competitively sensitive information. In the meantime, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has introduced new transparency requirements, encouraging the production and release of information regarding the logic and the risks stemming from (mostly automated) algorithmic data processing. This paper ultimately demonstrates that a role reversal between IP and Data Protection has occurred: the new Data Protection framework seems indeed to have taken up the new of function of mitigating the ‘secretizing’ pressure of the current European IP System.