Data Governance and Intellectual Property Governance in Common European Data Spaces

Project Information

DGIP-CEDS

Grant agreement ID: 101210413

DOI

10.3030/101210413

EC signature date 10 March 2025

Start date 1 April 2025

End date 31 March 2027

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 171 791,76

Coordinated by

SVEUCILISTE U RIJECI, PRAVNI FAKULTET
Croatia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DGIP-CEDS (Data Governance and Intellectual Property Governance in Common European Data Spaces)

Reporting period: 2025-04-01 to 2027-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The ‘Data Governance and Intellectual Property Governance in Common European Data Spaces’ (DGIP-CEDS) project situates within the European Union’s strategic push to build a competitive, secure, and values-based European data economy. Under the European Strategy for Data (2020), the EU set forth to establish a single market for data through the development of Common European Data Spaces (CEDS)—federated networks and interoperable data-sharing ecosystems built on secure infrastructures designed to enable controlled access to and sharing of data between public and private actors within and across strategic sectors and domains such as health, energy, mobility, smart cities, and public administration. CEDS aim to enhance the wider pooling and re-use of data under fair access rules and trustworthy governance mechanisms. These initiatives are central to advancing research and innovation, sustainability efforts, and the development of public services in EU Member States, while safeguarding fundamental rights, fair competition, and data sovereignty.

Despite significant regulatory progress during the 2019–2024 EU legislative term—including the adoption of the Data Governance Act, the Data Act, the AI Act, and the European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation, the first sectoral legislative framework for CEDS—stakeholders have highlighted legal uncertainties and other tensions regarding data protection, data governance, and intellectual property (IP) frameworks governing the European data economy and specifically, CEDS. These challenges risk undermining trust, limiting participation, and constraining the scalability of data sharing. To address these issues, the European Commission’s 2024–2029 agenda has prioritised the simplification and coherence of these legal frameworks under the Data Union Strategy (2025).

DGIP-CEDS facilitated this work by examining how legal (regulatory and contractual) frameworks could be refined and aligned to enable fair, efficient, and scalable data sharing in CEDS. In general, the project mapped legal sources, principles, requirements and data space configurations which define data governance and IP governance in CEDS. In addition, the project analysed the legal operationalisation of data governance and IP governance requirements in the implementation of the EHDS (as a regulated data space), and developed legal solutions to support the conceptualisation of such requirements in other CEDS (future data spaces). The project integrated legal analyses with insights from social sciences, as an interdisciplinary approach is essential for designing workable rules in CEDS that reflect societal expectations, stakeholder incentives, trust dynamics, and economic realities.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The DGIP-CEDS project carried out interdisciplinary legal-scientific analyses of data governance and IP requirements in CEDS, with particular attention to the interaction between the specificities of CEDS, the EU data acquis, and other relevant regulatory regimes and contractual frameworks. The research included analyses of legal definitions, rights, obligations, and governance roles across data-space architectures, and assessed how these elements operate in practice in relation to access, sharing, and reuse of data. The project consolidated evidence from horizontal and sector-specific data space developments in order to clarify how legal rules affect the functioning of multi-stakeholder data ecosystems, including the possible role of national authorities, and the allocation and balance of the rights and obligations of stakeholders. The project also produced focused scientific outputs on key domain-specific challenges, such as the governance of electronic health data subject to IP rights and trade secrets in secondary use settings (in the European Health Data Space), or the creation of appropriate legal conditions for data-enabled innovation in autonomous vehicle development (in the context of a future Common European Mobility Data Space).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

DGIP-CEDS goes beyond the state of the art by explaining that the practical success of CEDS depends on whether data access regimes, safeguards, and organisational arrangements are sufficiently precise to reduce uncertainty and support lawful and efficient data re-use. The results indicate that CEDS architectures can create enabling conditions for data-driven research and innovation only if they ensure legal clarity and consistent balancing of rights and obligations across sectors and jurisdictions. Furthermore, the project treats the protection of IP rights (including trade secrets) and accompanying value mechanisms (encompassing the rules and practices governing fee calculations and benefit redistribution from the reuse of IP-protected datasets) as a core governance issue in CEDS. The research findings critique the introduction of mandatory access regimes in the Data Act and the EHDS Regulation, which provide calibrated exceptions, limitations, or delegations of control to public authorities, thereby adjusting the exercise of IP rights enshrined in other international and EU legal instruments. The research findings posit that adequate and effective protection of IP rights are crucial in CEDS, which require legal and governance frameworks that ensure fair balance between facilitating legitimate data access and re-use by downstream data users, while safeguarding the IP rights and incentives of data holders.