On 29 March 2022, shortly after the publication of the proposal for a Data Act, the European Commission published the initiative “Access to vehicle data, functions and resources”. The background of this initiative is the long-standing conflict between vehicle manufacturers and a broad range...

Restrictions of data access for complementary services in digital (IoT) ecosystems are an increasing concern in the legal and economic discussion around the interface between competition law and data protection. The connected car and its ecosystem of innovative complementary products and...

Abstract: Both in US antitrust and EU competition policy a development to a broader appli-cation of rule of reason instead of per se rules can be observed. In the European discussion the attempt to base competition policy on a "more economic approach" is mainly viewed as im-proving the economic...

The digitalisation of the economy with data as the new critical resource is a technological revolution which requires an adaptation of the legal framework for markets and the economy. This paper analyzes the privacy concerns in the digital economy from an economics perspective. What can we learn...

The discussion about appropriate legal rules for the digital economy has raised the question of the ownership of non-personal data, e.g. in the context of value networks of firms, smart manufacturing and connected cars. The article analyzes from an economic perspective whether there is a need...

The "UsedSoft" decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) about the right of a buyer of a downloaded copy of a software to resell this copy triggered a controversial discussion about the applicability of the "exhaustion" rule (US: first-sale doctrine) to copyright-protected...

Obwohl es dem Konzept des Soft Paternalismus gelang, die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Bedeutung verhaltensökonomischer Erkenntnisse und die verhaltensbeeinflussende Wirkung von 'weichen' Politikinstrumenten wie Default rules zu lenken, wird gezeigt, dass der Soft Paternalismus nur einen sehr...

In its Communication "Building a European data economy" the EU Commission discusses the introduction of a new exclusive property right on data ("data producer right") for non-personal (or anonymised) machine-generated data, and mandatory access rights to privately held data for achieving more...